Divisioii  1^: 


THE  LAST  DAYS  OF 
JESUS  CHRIST 


THE   LAST  DAYS 

OF 

JESUS    CHRIST 


by/' 
LYMAN  ABBOTT 


New  York 
E.  P.  BUTTON  &  COMPANY 

681  Fifth  Avenue 


COPYBIQHT,    1918 

By  E.  P.  DUTTON  &  COMPANY 


printed  tn  the  dntted  States  of  Hmmca 


THE    LAST    DAYS    OF    JESUS    CHRIST 


Father,  we  thank  Thee  for  the  revelation 
Thou  hast  made  of  Thine  infinite  and  un- 
speakable nature  in  the  speaking  and  finite 
nature  of  Jesus  Christ,  our  elder  brother.  We 
thank  Thee  that  Thou  hast  come  to  earth  and 
lived  in  human  flesh  and  walked  incognito 
among  men,  hiding  Thyself  that  Thou 
mightst  be  revealed,  descending  that  Thou 
mightst  be  exalted,  sorrowing  that  Thou 
mightst  add  to  the  eternal  joy  of  all  Thy 
children  and  enrich  Thine  own  joy — the  joy 
of  self-sacrifice,  the  joy  of  a  suffering  love. 
Thou  perpetually  incarnate  God,  through  Je- 
sus Christ  Thy  Son  our  Saviour,  we  come  to 
Thee,  not  thinking  that  Thou  art  afar  off 
and  needest  a  mediator,  not  thinking  that 
Thou  art  like  the  God  of  Israel  of  old,  hiding 
Thyself  between  the  horns  of  the  altar,  unto 
whom  only  the  great  High  Priest  can  come, 
and  the  Children  of  Israel  only  unto  the 
Priest.  Through  Jesus  Christ  we  come  to 
Thee,  because  through  Jesus  Christ  Thou 
comest  to  us ;  to  the  window  we  come,  because 
through    the    window    the    eternal    sunlight 


THE    LAST    DAYS    OF    JESUS    CHRIST 

streams  into  the  room;  to  him  we  come,  be- 
cause he  is  Thy  word,  Thy  smile,  Thine  eyes. 
Thy  very  self  revealing  Thyself  through  the 
mask  and  veil  of  humanity.  We  could  not 
look  upon  Thee  unveiled  and  live ;  we  are  not 
large  enough  to  see  Thee;  and  so,  dear  God, 
we  think — yea,  we  do  know  and  believe — that 
Thou  hast  come  to  earth  and  seemed  to  belit- 
tle Thyself  that  we  might  see  Thee,  and  so 
hast  added  to  the  glory  that  could  not  be 
added  to  and  made  more  infinite  the  in- 
finity of  love. 


LIFE 

CHRIST  WITH  HIS 
ENEMIES  IN  THE  TEMPLE 


[2]        THE    LAST    DAYS    OF    JESUS    CHRIST 


The  God  that  to  the  fathers 

Revealed  His  holy  will 
Has  not  the  world  forsaken. 

He's  with  the  children  still. 
Then  envy  not  the  twilight 

That  glimmered  on  their  way; 
Look  up,  and  see  the  dawning 

That  broadens  into  day. 

'T  was  but  far  off,  in  vision. 

The  fathers'  eyes  could  see 
The  glory  of  the  kingdom^, — 

The  better  time  to  be. 
To-day  we  see  fulfilling 

The  dreams  they  dreamt  of  old; 
While  nearer,  ever  nearer. 

Rolls  on  the  age  of  gold. 

With  trust  in  God's  free  spirit, — 

The  ever-broadening  ray 
Of  truth  that  shines  to  guide  us 

Along  our  forward  way, — 
Let  us  to-day  be  faithful 

As  were  the  brave  of  old. 
Till  we,  their  work  completing. 

Bring  in  the  age  of  gold! 

MiNOT  J.  Savage. 


THE   I/AST   DAYS   OP    JESUS    CHRIST        [3] 


Tuesday,  the  fourth  day  of  April,  a.  d.  34, 
was  by  far  the  most  eventful  in  the  life  of 
Christ,  for  on  the  evening  of  that  day  and 
for  that  day's  utterances,  not  on  the  eve- 
ning of  his  more  formal  trial  nor  for  any 
word  of  blasphemy  that  he  uttered,  was  he 
condemned  to  die. 

Throughout  his  ministry  Jesus  in  his  treat- 
ment of  the  religionists  of  his  day  generally 
followed  his  counsel  to  his  disciples.  "Let 
them  alone,"  he  said;  "they  be  blind  leaders 
of  the  blind."  This  morning  he  pursued  a 
different  course.  He  went  early  to  the  Tem- 
ple, and  there  in  the  outer  court  challenged 
the  ecclesiastical  and  theological  teachers  of 
the  nation.  History  records  no  greater  act  of 
courage.  It  was  as  if  Luther  had  gone  to 
Rome  to  preach  the  doctrines  of  the  Ref- 
ormation in  the  court  before  St.  Peter's.  On 
this  day  Jesus  was  no  longer  a  teacher;  he 
was  a  fighter.  He  did  not  avoid  controversy; 
he  provoked  it.  Warnings  of  coming  doom, 
which  had  heretofore  been  generally  confined 
to  confidential  discourses  with  his  disciples, 
he  now  publicly  repeated.  He  attacked  the 
hierarchy  in  its  headquarters.     He  declared 


[4*]        THE    LAST    DAYS    OF    JESUS    CHRIST 

that  the  religion  of  the  Pharisees  was  one  of 
pretense;  that  they  were  mere  actors  on  a 
stage;  that  the  publicans  and  harlots  would 
go  into  the  kingdom  of  God  before  them; 
that  the  Jewish  nation  was  no  longer  the 
favored  people  of  God  and  would  never  be- 
come the  ruler  of  the  world ;  that  the  present 
generation,  by  slaying  the  Messiah,  would 
fulfill  the  iniquity  of  their  fathers;  that  the 
stone  which  they  refused  would  fall  upon 
them  and  grind  them  to  powder;  that  their 
Holy  City  would  be  utterly  destroyed  and 
they  themselves  scattered  far  and  wide 
among  the  Gentiles  whom  they  despised. 
The  instructions  of  the  day  ended  with 
three  parables  of  divine  judgment  given  to 
his  awed  and  perplexed  disciples.  In  one  of 
these  God's  judgment  was  compared  to  the 
fate  which  overtook  five  foolish  bridesmaids 
on  a  wedding  night. 

The  Jewish  wedding  day  was  characterized 
by  a  curious  ceremonial.  The  bridegroom 
came  at  night  with  his  companions  to  bring 
his  bride  from  her  home — possibly  a  sur- 
vival of  ruder  times  when  the  bride  was  cap- 
tured in  a  raid  and  became  the  reward  of 
her  warrior  husband's  courage.  Now,  how- 
ever, she  awaited  in  pleasing  anticipation  his 
coming,  and  her  bridesmaids  waited  with 
her.    These  bridesmaids  were  torch-bearers — 


THE    LAST    DAYS    OF    JESUS    CHRIST        [5] 

their  torches,  cup-like  vessels  filled  with  oil, 
a  wick  floating  on  the  top.  Jesus  told  the 
Story  of  a  wedding  in  which  five  of  the 
bridesmaids  thought  it  enough  to  have  lighted 
their  lamps,  while  five  believed  in  prepared- 
ness and  had  ready  a  supply  for  their  lamps 
when  the  oil  in  them  was  burned  out.  The 
foolish  bridesmaids  with  their  burned-out 
lamps  were  shut  out  from  the  procession  and 
the  feast  which  followed;  only  the  wise 
bridesmaids  shared  in  the  joys  of  the  wed- 
ding. 

In  vain  does  opportunity  invite  us  if  we 
are  not  ready  to  receive  it.  No  splendor  of 
the  past  suflices  to  give  glory  to  the  present. 

I  can  remember  when  the  admonition.  Pre- 
pare to  meet  thy  God,  filled  me  with  dread. 
It  paralyzed  my  powers,  forbade  my  ordi- 
nary activities,  seemed  to  call  me  away  from 
life  to  meditation,  prayer,  self-cleansing. 
Jehovah  seemed  to  me  a  Judge  whose  exact- 
ing justice  was  unmixed  with  charity,  who 
discerned  in  me  the  secret  sins  I  did  not 
myself  discern,  who  was  of  inflaming  con- 
suming purity,  whom  I  dared  not  meet.  How 
to  prepare  to  meet  him  I  knew  not. 

To-day  Prepare  to  meet  thy  God  is  to 
me  one  of  the  most  inspiring  summons  any 
literature  sacred  or  secular  contains.  He 
meets    me    at    unexpected    times,    in    unex- 


[6]        THE    LAST    DAYS    OF    JBSUS    CHRIST 

pected  places,  and  always  brings  with  him 
a  glad  surprise — even  when  it  is  an  awe- 
inspiring  surprise.  He  comes  bringing  gifts, 
and  not  the  least  of  them  some  new  oppor- 
tunity to  share  with  him  the  burdens  he  is 
bearing,  the  service  he  is  rendering,  the  work 
he  is  doing  to  bring  about  in  this  world  the 
Kingdom  of  righteousness,  peace,  and  joy. 
He  comes  as  Spring  comes  to  the  earth  with 
a  call  to  a  new  life;  as  the  babe  comes  to  the 
mother  with  a  call  to  the  joys  of  a  new 
consecration  to  love.  He  comes  as  Christ 
came  to  the  fishermen  at  the  Sea  of  Galilee 
with  the  promise,  I  will  make  you  fishers  of 
men.  He  comes  as  he  came  to  Paul  when 
he  called  him  to  be  a  preacher  of  the  Glad 
Tidings  to  the  Gentiles;  as  he  came  to 
Luther  when  he  met  him  on  Pilate's  stair- 
case; as  he  came  to  Abraham  Lincoln  when 
he  called  him  to  New  York  to  define  in  that 
ever  memorable  Cooper  Union  speech  the 
issue  which  confronted  a  puzzled  Nation;  as 
he  came  to  General  Armstrong  when  he 
called  him  to  lead  the  way  to  the  completed 
redemption  of  the  Negro  race. 

God  comes  to  Nations  summoning  them  to 
a  national  duty.  Each  new  service  ren- 
dered brings  a  call  to  a  greater  service;  each 
new  victory  brings  a  call  to  a  greater  battle. 
Alas!  for  the  Nation  which  cannot  read  the 


THE    LAST   DAYS    OF    JESUS    CHRIST        [7] 

signs  of  the  times;  which  cannot  see  the  op- 
portunity which  the  God  of  Nations  sets  be- 
fore it;  alas!  for  the  Nation  if  its  glory  all 
lies  buried  in  the  graves  of  its  ancestors. 

The  Jews  prided  themselves  on  being  the 
children  of  Abraham.  But  to  a  faithless  gen- 
eration it  profits  nothing  that  they  can  look 
back  to  an  ancestor  who  was  full  of  faith 
and  dared  a  great  adventure.  It  is  not  our 
glory  but  our  shame  that  we  are  the  descend- 
ants of  men  who  fought  at  Bunker  Hill  and 
suffered  at  Valley  Forge  if  we  have  not  their 
courageous  patriotism.  That  they  founded  a 
Republic  conceived  in  liberty  and  dedicated 
to  the  proposition  that  all  men  are  created 
equal  avails  us  nothing  if  we  have  not  the 
self-denying  courage  necessary  to  protect  that 
Republic  from  corruption  within  and  enemies 
without.  Are  we  prepared  to  keep  burning 
in  191 8  the  lamp  they  lighted  in  1776?  If 
not.  we  are  the  unworthy  descendants  of  a 
worthy  ancestry  and  will  find  the  door  of  the 
future  barred  in  our  faces. 

God  comes  to  His  church,  offers  afresh  His 
guiding  inspiring  spirit^  calls  it  afresh  to  its 
allotted  service,  and  gives  it  afresh  its  mes- 
sage, and  to  each  age  a  message  fitted  for  the 
needs  of  that  age.  In  the  first  century  great 
Pan  was  dead.  The  pagan  world  had  grown 
weary  of  its  gods  and  goddesses.  It  had  grown 


[8]       THE    LAST   DAYS   OP    JESUS    CHRIST 

weary  of  a  religion  and  a  priesthood  which 
demanded  much  and  offered  nothing.  It  was 
ready  to  welcome  a  religion  which  brought 
the  Glad  Tidings  that  there  is  but  one  God, 
;who  demands  of  his  children  righteousness 
and  demands  nothing  else,  and  who  is  the 
Father,  the  Friend,  the  Helper  of  the  whole 
human  race.  In  the  sixteenth  century  the 
world  was  growing  weary  of  a  church  which 
had  become  corrupted  by  its  wealth  and  its 
temporal  power,  and  had  lost  in  the  cathe- 
drals the  spirit  which  had  actuated  it  in  the 
catacombs,  and  the  world  was  ready  to  wel- 
come the  Glad  Tidings  that  the  gifts  of  God 
are  not  for  sale,  but  like  the  sun  and  the  rain 
are  freely  given  to  all  who  will  receive  them. 
In  the  twentieth  century  the  message  given 
to  the  Church  is  "One  is  your  Master — Christ 
— and  all  ye  are  brethren."  Go<^  brings  men 
of  every  Nation,  tribe  and  tongue  from  every 
quarter  of  the  globe,  and  sets  them  here  in 
America  at  our  church  doors,  that  we  may 
give  them  this  message.  How  to  unite  these 
people  of  various  habits  and  traditions  in  one 
American  citizenship  is  the  political  problem 
of  the  Nation.  How  to  unite  these  people  of 
hostile  creeds  in  one  catholic  faith  more 
spiritual  and,  therefore,  more  catholic  than 
any  creed  is  the  problem  of  the  Christian 
Church.    Is  it  fulfilling  its  mission? 


THE    LAST    DAYS    OP    JESUS    CHRIST        [9] 

The  world  judges  the  Church  by  its  pres- 
ent service,  not  by  its  past  history,  and  the 
world  judges  it  aright.  If  the  Church  has 
to  look  to  a  historic  past  for  its  glory,  that 
glory  is  its  shame.  The  lamp  which  a  previ- 
ous generation  lighted  furnishes  only  smoke 
unless  the  present  generation  keeps  alive  the 
spirit  of  the  fathers.  The  orthodoxy  of  the 
sixteenth  century  does  not  make  the  twen- 
tieth-century Church  sound  in  the  faith;  the 
piety  of  the  first  century  does  not  make  the 
twentieth-century  Church  a  living  Church. 
And  only  a  living  Church  can  be  a  Church 
of  the  living  God.  The  father  may  live  in 
the  sons,  but  the  sons  cannot  live  in  the  fa- 
thers ;  and  it  is  quite  immaterial  whether  they 
are  Puritan  fathers  or  ante-Nicene  fathers. 

To  every  wedding  Christ  eomes  as  he  came 
to  the  wedding  in  Cana  of  Galilee.  To  every 
bride  and  groom  a  new  book  of  life  is  offered, 
a  new  door  of  opportunity  stands  ajar — op- 
portunity for  love,  service  and  sacrifice. 
Every  new  family  may  be  and  should  be  a 
type  of  the  true  social  order.  Every  new 
parenthood  should  get  its  inspiration  from 
the  Father  of  whom  every  family  in  heaven 
and  earth  is  named. 

But  if  love  is  only  a  new  form  of  self- 
seeking,  if  happiness  is  the  only  prize  per- 
ceived and  sought  for,  the  book  of  life  re- 


[10]    THE    LAST    DAYS    OF    JESUS    CHRIST 

mains  unopened,  the  door  of  opportunity  is 
closed.  Of  the  various  escapes  offered  for 
unhappy  marriages  some  are  nostrums,  some 
are  palliatives.  There  is  only  one  cure — 
love.  They  who  keep  their  love  aflame  only 
during  the  honeymoon  add  to  the  bitterness 
of  the  present  by  their  memory  of  the  past. 
Happy  they  who  keep  up  the  spirit  of  their 
courtship  during  half  a  century  of  wedded 
life.  Happy  they  who  keep  love  always 
lighted  in  their  home,  for  they  find  the  joy 
of  the  golden  wedding  more  satisfying, 
though  it  be  less  exuberant,  than  the  joy  of 
the  bridal  day. 

To  every  youth  God  gives  two  lights — 
idealism  and  hope.  I  like  to  speak  to  college 
students  because  through  their  faces  I  see 
these  inward  lights  shining.  Too  often,  ten 
years  later  life  has  extinguished  them.  Why? 
All  his  troubles,  difficulties,  enemies  could  not 
extinguish  these  lights  in  Paul.  "We  glory 
in  tribulations,"  he  said,  "knowing  that  tribu- 
lation worketh  patience,  and  patience  experi- 
ence, and  experience  hope."  The  experience 
of  life  should  feed  the  light  of  hope,  not  ex- 
tinguish it.  His  ideals  grew  clearer  and 
nearer  as  the  years  went  by.  It  was  as  life 
was  drawing  to  its  close  that  he  wrote  to  his 
friends,  "I  press  forward  toward  the  goal  for 
the  prize  of  the  upward  calling  of  God  In 


THE    LAST    DAYS    OF    JESUS    CHRIST     [ll] 

Christ  Jesus."     No  man  ever  need  lose  the 
ideals  and  hopes  of  his  youth. 

I  cut  from  a  recent  issue  of  the  New  York 
Evening  Sun  the  following  paragraph: 

Young  Paget  knew  he  could  not  live  long. 
Hands  and  arms  were  paralyzed  and  he  en- 
tered classes  in  a  wheeled  chair.  Said  Pro- 
fessor Erskine: 

He  resolved  to  spend  his  hour  richly,  pursuing 
large  plans,  as  one  whose  hope  was  in  the  everlast- 
ing and  who  though  not  permitted  to  enjoy  his 
share  of  time  was  at  home  in  eternity.  It  was  his 
wish  to  prepare  himself  for  important  service, 
however  short  the  opportunity  might  prove.  .  .  . 

No  man  should  allow  himself  ever  to  lose 
the  ideals  and  hopes  of  his  youth,  for  they 
are  the  secret  of  perpetual  youth  and  per- 
petual j'^outh  is  an  essential  condition  of  use- 
fulness. The  octogenarian  who  lives  only  in 
the  memory  of  the  past  will  never  find  an  op- 
portunity for  useful  service  for  himself  nor 
be  able  to  aid  his  grandchildren  to  find  one. 
"Old  men  for  counsel,  young  men  for  action/' 
is  a  wise  motto.  His  counsel  is  priceless  who 
gives  younger  men  the  lesson  of  his  own 
blunders ;  but  his  counsel  is  valueless  if  all  he 
can  say  is,  "We  did  not  do  so  in  our  time." 

God  comes  to  the  individual,  comes  in  an 
experience  so  novel  that  he  thinks  of  it  as  a 


[12]     THE    LAST    DAYS    OF    JESUS    CHRIST 

new  birth.     H.  G.  Wells  has  in  a  characteris- 
tic paragraph  described  this  experience : 

The  moment  may  come  while  we  are  alone  in 
the  darkness,  under  the  stars,  or  while  we  walk 
by  ourselves  or  in  a  crowd,  or  while  we  sit  and 
muse.  It  may  come  upon  the  sinking  ship  or  in 
the  tumult  of  the  battle.  There  is  no  saying  when 
it  may  not  come  to  us  ...  .  But  after  it  has  come 
our  lives  are  changed,  God  is  with  us  and  there 
is  no  more  doubt  of  God. 

Oh!  if  it  only  were  always  so.  But  it  is 
not  always  so.  The  doubts  of  God  come  back 
again.  He  seems  to  have  left  us;  or  have  we 
left  Him?  The  light  and  joy  of  the  new  life 
go  out.  Religion  becomes  a  memory.  God 
becomes  an  hypothesis.  The  lamp  has  gone 
out.  It  gives  no  light,  only  smoke.  Faith 
ceases  to  be  a  living  experience  and  becomes 
a  creed.    What  was  once  alive  is  now  a  fossil. 

What  shall  we  do?  If  the  wheat  planted  in 
the  Spring  brings  forth  no  harvest  in  the 
Fall,  a  recollection  of  the  Spring  sowing  will 
not  furnish  Winter  food.  Better  plough  the 
weeds  under  and  begin  again.  The  Christian 
who  can  find  nothing  better  to  sing  than 

What  peaceful  hours  I  once  enjoyed. 
How  sweet  their  memory  still! 

had  better  forget  them  and  be  reconverted. 
He  whose  only  reason  for  thinking  that  he  is 


THE    LAST    DAYS    OP    JESUS    CHRIST     [13] 

a  Christian  is  that  he  "got  religion"  in  his 
youth  had  better  forget  that  lie  got  it  and 
try   again. 

It  is  a  poor  present  which  shines  only  by 
the  reflected  glory  of  a  past. 


THE    LAST   DAYS    OF    JESUS    CHRIST     [15] 


l$taptv 

Father,  who  sent  Thy  Son  into  the  world  to 
be  the  light  of  the  world,  lighten  our  darkness 
we  beseech  Thee.  We,  Thy  children,  know 
neither  ourselves  nor  the  life  that  lies  before 
us.  Prepare  us  for  what  Thou  art  preparing 
for  us.  Keep  us  from  the  ambition  that 
covets  great  tasks.  Keep  us  from  the  cow- 
ardice that  evades  the  tasks  to  which  Thou 
dost  call  us.  Keep  us  from  despair  because 
of  our  failures.  Keep  us  from  self-conceit 
because  of  our  successes.  By  Thy  companion- 
ship equip  us  for  the  high  adventure  of  life. 
To  every  call  of  duty  may  we  respond,  Lo ! 
I  come  to  do  Thy  will,  O  God.  Ever  forget- 
ting what  we  have  left  behind,  may  we  press 
forward  in  eager  response  to  Thine  upward 
calling  in  Christ  Jesus.    Amen. 


LOVE 

CHRIST  WITH  HIS 
FRIENDS  IN  THE  HOME 


[18]     THE    LAST    DAYS    OF    JESUS    CHRIST 


Love  bade  me  welcome;  yet  my   soul  drew 
back. 
Guilty  of  dust  and  sin. 
But    quick-eyed    Love,    observing    me    grow 
slack 
From  my  first  entrance  in. 
Drew  nearer  to  me,  sweetly  questioning 
If  I  lack'd  anything. 

"A  guest,"  I  answered,  "worthy  to  be  here." 

Love  said,  "You  shall  be  he." 
"I,  the  unkind,  ungrateful?     Ah,  my  dear, 

I  cannot  look  on  Thee." 
Love  took  my  hand  and  smiling  did  reply, 

"Who  made  the  eyes  but  I  ?" 

"Truth,  Lord;  but  I  have  marr'd  them:  let 
my  shame 
Go  where  it  doth  deserve." 
"And  know  you  not,"  says  Love,  "who  bore 
the  blame?" 
"My  dear,  then  I  will  serve." 
"You  must  sit  down,"  says  Love,  "and  taste 
my  meat." 
So  I  did  sit  and  eat. 

George  Herbert. 


THE    LAST   DAYS   OP   JESUS    CHRIST  *  [19]| 


From  his  conflict  with  his  enemies  in  the 
Temple  during  his  last  eventful  week  Jesus 
sought  at  night  repose,  generally  outside  the 
city  walls;  sometimes  probably  sleeping  on 
the  hillside  with  his  burnoose  wrapped  about 
him;  once  we  know  in  a  garden  of  olives; 
once  in  a  house  of  a  friend  in  the  neighbor- 
ing village  of  Bethany;  once  in  the  house  of 
an  unknown  friend  within  the  city.  The 
name,  condition,  character  of  this  friend  are 
all  unknown.  Jesus  probably  had  many  de- 
voted friends  even  in  Jerusalem  whose  friend- 
ship in  that  perilous  hour  was  carefully  con- 
cealed except  from  the  elect  few.  This  un- 
known friend  had  offered  him  a  room  where 
he  could  observe  the  Passover  supper  with  his 
disciples.  Even  they  apparently  knew  noth- 
ing of  their  host. 

The  record  which  we  possess  of  the  Mas- 
ter's parting  words  to  his  disciples  was  prob- 
ably written  down  by  disciples  of  John,  as 
his  amanuenses,  more  than  half  a  century 
after  the  event.  To  the  literalist  this  will 
seem  a  great  misfortune.  To  me  these  in- 
comparable words  are  not  less  sacred  because 
they  represent  the  imperishable  memory  of 


[20]    THE    LAST   DAYS   OF    JESUS    CHRIST 

the  one  disciple  whose  courageous  devotion  to 
his  Ma&'er  kept  him  at  the  cross  until  his 
Master's  death — the  disciple  whom  Jesus  in 
that  hour  adopted  as  his  son  and  to  whom  he 
intrusted  the  future  care  of  his  own  widowed 
and  heart-pierced  mother. 

It  was  characteristic  of  Jesus  that  he  made 
this  hour  of  gloom  the  most  luminous  hour  of 
his  life's  teaching,  that  he  did  not  seek  com- 
fort from  his  disciples  but  gave  comfort  to 
them^  and  strengthened  the  courage  of  his 
own  faith  by  imparting  courage  to  their  per- 
plexed and  troubled  hearts.  For  the  spirit 
always  grows  by  imparting:  we  add  to  our 
courage  by  encouraging  the  timid,  inspire  our 
hopes  by  ministering  to  the  disheartened,  and 
make  clearer  our  vision  by  telling  others  what 
we  have  seemj 

I  shall  not  attempt  a  paraphrase  of  Christ's 
monologue.  My  ambition  is  humbler;  it  is  to 
translate  it  into  terms  of  every-day  human  ex- 
perience. 

His  opening  sentence  gives  two  keys  to  un- 
lock the  door  to  the  "life  that  really  is." 
"Have  faith  in  God."  How  can  we  have  faith 
in  him  whom  we  hav^e  not  seen  and  cannot 
see?  Show  us  the  Father  and  it  sufficeth  us. 
If  you  cannot  have  faith  in  God,  then  "Have 
faith  in  me." 

Faith  in  God  is  not  the  door  to  Christian 


THE    LrAST    DAYS    OF    JESUS    CHRIST     [21] 

faith;  Christian  faith  is  the  door  to  faith  in 
God.  It  is  not  easy  in  a  world  of  sorrow, 
temptation,  and  sin  to  have  faith  in  a  good 
God  who  made  and  governs  the  world.  But 
it  is  not  difficult  to  have  faith  in  a  good  man 
who  confronts  danger  with  courage,  endures 
sorrow  with  patience,  encounters  temptation 
without  thought  of  yielding,  and  bears  the 
burdens  of  sins  not  his  own  without  murmur- 
ing. Who  can  do  other  than  believe  in  such 
a  one.'*  Not  in  ecclesiastical  definitions  about 
him,  but  in  his  character,  in  his  personalit}'^, 
in  the  worth -whileness  of  Tiis  life.  Faith  in 
Abraham  Lincoln  has  inspired  the  American 
people  and  made  them  what  they  would  not 
have  been  but  for  Abraham  Lincoln.  Faith 
in  Jesus  Christ  has  made  the  world  what  it 
never  could  have  been  without  Jesus  Christ. 
This  is  the  beginning  of  Christian  faith:  it 
inspires  in  us  the  desire  to  encounter  our  dan- 
gers with  his  courage,  to  bear  our  burdens 
with  his  patience,  to  meet  our  temptations 
with  his  unyielding  resolve,  and  to  bear  the 
consequences  of  others'  sins  with  his  suffering 
love. 

But  this  is  only  the  beginning.  This  hu- 
man life  is  a  reflection  of  the  divine  life.  Sir 
Oliver  Lodge  has  put  this  second  step  in  the 
Christian  faith  with  beautiful  simplicity: 


[22]     THE    LAST    DAYS    OF    JESUS    CHRIST 

Undoubtedly  the  Christian  idea  of  God  is  the 
simple  one.  Overpoweringly  and  appallingly  sim- 
ple is  the  notion  presented  to  us  by  the  orthodox 
Christian  churches: 

A  babe  born  of  poor  parents,  born  in  a  stable 
among  cattle  because  there  was  no  room  for  them 
in  the  village  inn — no  room  for  them  in  the  inn — 
what  a  master  touch !  Revealed  to  shepherds.  Re- 
ligious people  inattentive.  Royaltj'^  ignorant,  or 
bent  on  massacre.  A  glimmering  perception,  ac- 
cording to  one  noble  legend,  attained  in  the  Far 
East — where  also  similar  occurrences  have  been 
narrated.  Then  the  child  growing  into  a  peasant 
youth,  brought  up  to  a  trade.  At  length  a  few 
years  of  itinerant  preaching;  flashes  of  miraculous 
power  and  insight.  And  then  a  swift  end:  set 
upon  by  the  religious  people  his  followers  overawed 
and  scattered,  himself  tried  as  a  blasphemer, 
flogged,  and  finally  tortured  to  death. 

Simplicity  most  thorough  and  most  strange!  In 
itself  it  is  not  unique.  Such  occurrences  seem  in- 
evitable to  highest  humanity  in  an  unregenerate 
world;  but  who,  without  inspiration,  would  see  in 
them  a  revelation  of  the  nature  of  God?  The 
life  of  Buddha,  the  life  of  Joan  of  Arc,  are  not 
thus  regarded.  Yet  the  Christian  revelation  is  clear 
enough  and  true  enough  if  our  eyes  are  open  and 
if  we  care  to  read  and  accept  the  simple  record 
which,  whatever  its  historical  value,  is  all  that  has 
been  handed  down  to  us. 

Believe  in  me,  Jesus  says  to  me.  Yes, 
I  reply;  I  can  believe  in  thee.  Even 
Renan,  even  John  Stuart  Mill,  could  believe 
in  thee.  Believe  that  the  Father  is  in  me. 
Yes;  I  can  believe  that  the  Father  is  in  him. 
The  Church  tells  me  that  the  Father  is  all- 
powerful.     Perhaps.     But  I  do  not  reverence 


THE    LAST   DAYS   OF    JESUS    CHRIST    [23] 

power.  The  Church  tells  me  that  the  Father 
is  all-wise.  Perhaps.  But  I  do  not  reverence 
wisdom.  Jesus  tells  me  that  the  Father  is  all 
love,  and  his  life  tells  me  what  love  means. 
And  I  reverence  love.  Whether  it  is  all-pow- 
erful or  not,  whether  it  is  all-wise  or  not,  I 
reverence  love.  Even  if  I  were  a  Persian 
and  believed  in  two  gods,  an  Ormuzd  and  an 
Ahriman,  a  good  god  and  a  bad  god,  and  be- 
lieved that  in  this  world  they  were  in  a  battle 
on  which  the  destiny  of  the  universe  de- 
pended, even  if  I  did  not  know  and  could  not 
even  guess  which  was  to  win,  I  would  rever- 
ence the  good  god  and  fight  tlie  bad  one.  Even 
if  I  thought  the  drama  of  Palestine  fore- 
shadowed the  end  of  the  world  drama,  that 
the  ambitious  Caiaphas  and  the  cowardly 
Pilate  and  the  treacherous  Judas  would  be 
victors  and  love  would  be  crucified,  I  should 
still  reverence  love,  and  I  hope  I  should  dare 
to  take  my  place  with  the  mother  of  the 
pierced  heart,  not  with  the  triumphant  foes. 
Yes ;  I  can  believe  that  the  Father  is  in  Jesus 
His  Son. 

But  this  is  not  the  end  of  the  Christian 
faith.  There  is  a  third  stage.  "I  will  not 
leave  you  orphans;  I  will  come  to  you.  Yet 
a  little  while,  and  the  world  seeth  me  no  more ; 
but  ye  see  me,  because  I  am  living  and  ye 


[24]     THE    LAST   DAYS    OP    JESUS    CHRIST 

shall  live  also."  An  orphan  is  not  one  who 
is  fatherless.  He  had  a  father^  whom  mem- 
ory recalls  from  the  past.  He  will  have  a 
father^  whom  hope  anticipates  meeting  in  the 
future.     But  now  he  is  without  a  father. 

There  are  many  orphaned  Christians.  They 
believe  in  a  Father  who  was  formerly  active 
in  the  world,  about  whom  they  read  in  the 
Bible.  They  believe  in  a  Father  who  will  ap- 
pear in  the  great  day  of  the  future  to  judge 
the  world.  But  now  ?  Now  they  are  without 
a  Father.  Inspiration  and  revelation  they 
think  have  ceased;  no  wonder,  then,  that 
prayer  ceases.  Why  go  on  forever  talking 
to  a  god  who  gives  no  answer?  God  in  his- 
tory ?  Yes ;  in  past  history.  In  Jewish  wars ; 
but  not  in  the  European  war.  In  humanity? 
Yes.  In  Hebrew  prophets;  but  not  in  twen- 
tieth-century prophets.  Walking  with  Enoch, 
but  with  no  one  now;  speaking  to  Abraham, 
but  to  no  one  now ;  dwelling  in  the  Christ,  but 
dwelling  with  no  one  now.  A  silent  God;  an 
absentee  God;  a  forgetting  and  a  forgotten 
God;  what  Carlyle  has  well  called  "an  hypo- 
thetical God."  Over  against  this  common  ex- 
perience of  to-day  I  put  Harnack's  confession 
of  his  faith:  "Not  only  in  the  beginning  was 
the  Word,  the  Word  that  was  at  once  deed 
and  life;  but  the  living,  resolute,  indomitable 


THE    LAST    DAYS    OF    JESUS    CHRIST    [25] 

Word — namely,  the  person — has  always  been 
a  power  in  history,  along  with  and  above  the 
power  of  circumstance." 

This  is  my  faith.  I  believe  in  a  Universal 
Presence,  a  Great  Companion,  a  living  Christ 
forever  incarnate  in  the  hearts  and  lives  of 
his  friends,  living  now  in  the  world  with 
mightier  and  wider  influence  and  in  more  inti- 
mate communion  and  companionship  with  his 
disciples  than  ever  before,  a  living  vine  grow- 
ing from  a  little  seed  planted  nineteen  cen- 
turies ago  and  since  then  spreading  over  the 
whole  earth,  whose  fruits  are  a  peace  which 
troubles  cannot  disturb  and  a  joy  which  pains 
cannot  destroy.  The  seed  of  this  faith  was 
given  to  me  many  years  ago  by  John's  report 
of  the  last  discourse  of  Jesus  to  his  disciples. 
It  has  grown  since  with  the  growing  experi- 
ence of  over  half  a  century  of  Christian  dis- 
cipleship. 

It  is  true  I  have  never  had  the  ecstatic  vi- 
sions which  I  read  of  occasionally  in  the 
spiritual  biographies  of  the  mystics.  Jesus 
has  not  promised  such  visions  to  any  one.  They 
may  be  real,  but  they  are  not  normal.  I 
doubt  whether  they  conduce  to  the  most 
Christlike  living.  At  all  events,  they  are  not 
for  me.  I  have  no  desire  for  them.  George 
Croly  has  voiced  for  me  my  prayer: 


[26]    THE    LAST    DAYS    OP    JESUS    CHRIST 

I  ask  no  dream,  no  prophet  ecstasies. 
No  sudden  rending  of  the  veil  of  clav. 

No  angel  visitant,  no  opening  skies; 
But  take  the  dimness  of  my  soul  away. 

Teach  me  to  feel  that  thou  art  always  nigh; 

Teach  me  the  struggles  of  the  soul  to  bear. 
To  check  the  rising  doubt,  the  rebel  sigh; 

Teach  me  the  patience  of  unanswered  prayer. 

I  have  never  practiced  the  fastings,  the 
flagellations,  the  denials  of  the  body  which 
some  of  the  mystics  seem  to  have  thought  es- 
sential to  obtain  their  spiritual  ecstasies.  If 
personal  fellowship  with  God  is  to  be  a  natu- 
ral experience,  the  condition  of  enjoying  it 
must  be  a  natural  condition.  Jesus  prescribes 
no  other.  Loyalty  to  him  is  the  only  condi- 
tion he  prescribes.  "If  a  man  love  me,  he 
will  keep  my  word;  and  my  Father  will  love 
him,  and  we  will  come  unto  him,  and  make 
our  abode  with  him."  And  lest  any  one 
should  think  this  word  which  his  disciples  are 
to  keep  requires  some  mystical  act  of  faith  or 
supernatural  act  of  self-denial,  Jesus  tells 
them  what  this  word  is:  "This  is  my  com- 
mandment. That  ye  love  one  another,  as  I 
have  loved  you." 

Love  is  the  key  to  Christ's  character;  love 
is  the  secret  of  the  Christ  life;  to  love  is  to 
follow  Christ.  A  life  of  asceticism,  a  life  of 
retirement  and  meditation,  is  not  the  way  to 


THE    LAST    DAYS    OF    JESUS    CHRIST     [27] 

companionship  with  Christ.  The  way  to  com- 
panionship with  Christ  is  a  life  like  that  of 
Jesus — a  life  of  love,  service,  and  sacrifice. 
And  as  to  self-denial  as  a  means  for  the  puri- 
fication of  the  spirit,  "Life  itself,  rightly 
lived,  offers  the  best  and  most  normal  means 
of  purification.  Here,  right  at  hand,  in  daily 
living,  without  fleeing  to  the  desert  or  retreat- 
ing to  the  monastery,  without  the  use  of  fast- 
ing or  hair  shirt,  mortification  or  flagellation, 
in  every-day  duties  and  disciplines,  lies  the 
divinely  ordained  corrective  of  the  flesh. 
Here  is  ample  training  for  the  spirit."  ^ 

Faith  in  the  life  and  character  of  Jesus 
Christ  as  a  supreme  example  of  a  life  worth 
living  and  a  character  worth  having;  faith  in 
Jesus  Christ  as  the  supreme  interpretation  of 
a  God  to  love  and  to  obey ;  and  faith  in  Jesus 
Christ  as  a  giver  of  life  by  his  presence  and 
companionship  with  those  that  love  him  and 
desire  to  be  like  him: — Such  is  the  last  mes- 
sage of  Jesus  to  his  disciples,  or  rather,  as 
much  of  that  message  as  one  of  his  disciples 
has  learned  in  his  life  experience. 

*  "Mysticism  and  Modern  Life,"  by  John  Wright 
Buckham,  p.  41. 


THE    LAST   DAYS   OP   JESUS    CHRIST    [29] 


Father — who  hast  given  us  Thy  Son  to  be 
our  Comrade,  sharing  our  joys  and  our  sor- 
rows, our  imperfect  knowledge  and  our  im- 
perfect strength,  our  trials  and  our  tempta- 
tions, 'haring  everything  except  our  sins,  we 
believe  in  him,  in  his  life,  his  love,  his  mis- 
sion. Are  we  too  venturesome  if  we  dare  to 
ask  for  ourselves  what  Thy  Son  has  asked 
for  us  ?  We  are  Thine :  have  us  in  Thy  keep- 
ing. We  ask  not  that  Thou  shouldest  take  us 
out  of  this  sinning  and  sorrowing  world ;  but. 
Father,  give  us  the  strength  to  share  with 
Thy  Son  the  burden  of  the  world's  sins  and 
sorrows,  that  with  him  we  may  conquer  the 
evil  that  is  in  the  world.  Dying,  he  has  sent 
us  into  the  world  to  carry  on  the  work  which 
Thou  gavest  to  him  and  to  us  to  do.  By  Thy 
truth  make  us  holy  and  undefiled,  as  He  was 
holy  and  undefiled.  Abide  in  us  as  Thou  didst 
abide  in  him,  that  we  may  be  made  perfect  in 
him  with  Thee.  Is  he  not  still  in  the  world,  re- 
deeming the  world  ?  Suffer  us,  though  we  are 
not  yet  holy  and  undefiled,  to  be  with  him  in 
his  great  mission,  understanding  his  glory  be- 


[30]     THE    LAST   DAYS    OP    JESUS    CHRIST 

cause  we  share  it  with  him — the  glory  of  his 
love,  his  service,  and  his  sacrifice.  And  this 
we  ask  for  his  sake  who  is  our  Leader  in  the 
great  campaign.    Amen. 


CONSECRATION 

CHRIST  WITH  HIS 
GOD  IN  THE  GARDEN 


[32]     THE    LAST    DAYS    OF    JESUS    CHRIST 


Into  the  woods  my  Master  went,* 

Clean  forspent,  forspent, 
Into  the  woods  my  Master  came. 

Forspent  with  love  and  shame. 
But  the  olives  they  were  not  blind  to  him; 

The  little  green  leaves  were  kind  to  him; 
The  thorn-tree  had  a  mind  to  him; 

When  into  the  woods  he  came. 

Out  of  the  woods  my  Master  went, 

And  he  was  well  content. 
Out  of  the  woods  my  Master  came. 

Content  with  death  and  shame. 
When  Death  and  Shame  would  woo  him  last, 

From  under  the  trees  they  drew  him  last; 
'Twas  on  a  tree  they  slew  him — last 

When  out  of  the  woods  he  came. 

Sidney  Lanier. 

*  Copyright  by  Charles  Scribner's  Sons,  by  whose 
courtesy  the  poem  is  here  included. 


THE    LAST    DAYS    OF    JESUS    CHRIST     [33] 


The  Old  Testament  prophets  had  foretold 
a  new  social  and  political  order  of  the  world 
in  which  war  would  cease  and  the  weapons 
of  warfare  would  be  turned  into  tools  of 
peaceful  industry,  in  which  liberty  would  be 
established  and  the  only  sanction  for  law 
necessary  would  be  the  authority  of  God,  in 
which  property  would  be  more  equitably  di- 
vided and  every  man  would  sit  under  his  own 
vine  and  fig  tree,  in  which  there  would  be  uni- 
versal education  and  no  man  would  need  to 
teach  his  neighbor.  The  burden  of  Jesus' 
ministry  was  that  this  kingdom  of  God  was 
at  hand.  He  had  come  to  inaugurate  it,  and 
his  message  was  at  first  received  by  the  com- 
mon people  with  great  enthusiasm. 

But  they  received  it  with  enthusiasm  be- 
cause they  did  not  understand  it.  The  ex- 
pected emancipation  from  the  Roman  yoke; 
the  establishment  of  a  new  and  world-wide 
kingdom  of  which  the  Jewish  nation  would 
be  the  head;  and  that  Jerusalem,  not  Rome, 
would  be  the  mistress  of  the  world.  This 
dream  of  a  Jewish  empire  was  hopelessly 
wild  and  singularly  visionary.  Rome  was  a 
nation  of  soldiers.     Her  standing  army  num- 


[34]     THE    LAST    DAYS    OF    JESUS    CHRIST 

bered  nearly  half  a  million  of  men.  The 
whole  military  force  of  Judaism  proved  no 
match  for  about  thirty  thousand  of  these 
men  forty  years  later.  Nor  would  the  condi- 
tion of  the  world  have  been  improved  by  any 
such  change  of  masters.  Rome  was  a  better 
queen  than  Jerusalem  would  have  been ;  Pilate 
a  better  administrator  than  Caiaphas. 

Yet  Judaism  might  have  conquered  Rome. 
Rome,  strong  in  military  power,  was  weak  in 
moral  ideas.  Her  heart  was  feeble;  only  her 
muscles  were  strong.  Her  government  was 
corrupt;  bribery  was  universal  and  uncon- 
cealed. In  the  courts  of  justice  gold  was  the 
plea  of  the  wealthy,  the  passions  of  the  popu- 
lace were  the  defense  of  the  poor.  Chastity 
and  temperance  were  the  common  subjects  of 
satire.  The  drama  was  supplanted  by  gladia- 
torial combats,  and  feasting  and  revelry,  con- 
tinued through  many  days  and  nights,  became 
banquets  of  death.  Here,  then,  was  Rome's 
weakest  point,  here  Judaism's  strong  point. 
The  religion  of  Rome  provoked  the  derision 
of  the  wise  by  presenting  for  their  adoration 
a  host  of  sensual  gods  and  goddesses ;  the  re- 
ligion of  the  Jews  demanded  reverence  for 
one  supreme  and  spiritual  Jehovah.  The 
Roman  religion  deduced  the  will  of  the  gods 
from  the  chance  flight  of  birds  or  the  study 
of  the  entrails  of  the  sacrificial  victim;  the 


THE    LAST   DAYS   OP   JESUS    CHRIST    [SS"] 

Jewish  religion  pointed  to  the  sublime  enact- 
ments of  Mount  Sinai,  the  plain  precepts  of 
the  prophets,  and  the  moral  maxims  of  the 
Book  of  Proverbs.  Rome,  regarding  religion 
as  a  political  instrument,  left  it  to  be  regu- 
lated for  the  nation  by  the  senate;  Judaism, 
regarding  it  as  an  individual  life,  forbade 
any  one  from  interfering  between  the  soul 
and  its  God. 

But  if  this  conquest  of  Rome  was  to  be 
achieved  by  the  Jewish  people  they  must  first 
win  a  conquest  over  themselves.  They  must 
revive  the  spiritual  faith  of  their  fathers, 
proclaimed,  manifested,  and  illustrated  by 
their  prophets,  and  sweep  away  the  mass  of 
ecclesiastical  and  theological  rubbish  beneath 
which  that  faith  was  buried. 
^/At  first  the  message  of  Jesus  was  accepted 
with  enthusiasm.  His  grace  of  diction,  his 
pictorial  imagination,  his  sympathetic  under- 
standing of  the  common  people,  his  spiritual 
enthusiasm,  the  contrast  of  his  vivid  teaching 
of  practical  truth  with  the  dry-as-dust  theolo- 
gies of  the  scribes,  his  practice  in  acts  of 
mercy  and  charity  of  the  truths  he  taught, 
drew  the  people  to  him.  Great  crowds 
thronged  to  hear  him  wherever  he  went.  His 
journeys  through  Galilee  were  like  triumphal 
processions.? 

But  this  was  because  the  people  did  not, 


[36]    THE    LAST   DAYS   OF    JESUS    CHRIST 

would  not,  perhaps  could  not,  comprehend 
his  message.  In  vain  he  told  them  with  many 
a  parable  that  the  kingdom  of  God  would  not 
immediately  appear;  that  it  would  grow  up 
gradually,  secretly,  in  spite  of  hostility;  that 
it  would  not  be  given  to  a  waiting  Israel  by 
God,  but  won  by  an  eager  Israel  at  a  great 
cost.  Prejudices,  the  growth  of  generations, 
cannot  be  dissipated  by  a  single  teacher  in  a 
single  lifetime,  however  powerful  his  teach- 
ing. The  popular  misapprehension  in  that 
age  is  not  strange,  since  even  now  scholars  in- 
sist in  attributing  to  Jesus  the  very  errors 
which  he  so  vigorously  combated.  When  he 
refused  the  proffered  crown  and  told  the 
thronging  hearers  plainly  that  they  could 
win  only  by  self-sacrifice  the  kingdom  which 
they  had  hoped  to  receive  as  an  inheritance 
without  effort,  they  abandoned  him.  So  uni- 
versal even  in  Galilee  was  the  disaffection 
that  he  turned  sadly  to  his  own  chosen  friends 
with  the  pathetic  inquiry,  "Will  ye  also  go 
away?" 

And  now  that  the  end  was  drawing  near 
it  needed  no  supernatural  vision  to  foresee 
what  that  end  must  be.  The  brief  enthusiasm 
with  which  Jesus  had  been  welcomed  on  enter- 
ing Jerusalem  did  not  deceive  him.  Probably 
that  enthusiasm  was  effectually  dissipated  by 
his  Temple  teaching  that  the  kingdom  would 


THE    LAST    DAYS    OF    JESUS    CHRIST     [37] 

be  taken  from  Israel  and  given  to  the  Gentile 
world,  ^t  least  no  indication  of  its  continu- 
ing existence  is  furnished  by  the  Gospel  ac- 
counts of  Christ's  last  week  in  Jerusalem. 
The  plans  for  his  arrest,  trial,  and  conviction 
had  been  made.  The  traitor  who  was  to  be- 
tray his  place  of  retirement  had  been  pur- 
chased. Jesus  had  but  one  alternative:  either 
to  flee  into  the  wilderness,  abandon  his  mis- 
sion and  wait  for  some  other  one  to  succeed 
where  he  had  failed,  or  to  go  forward  in  a 
hope  against  hope  that  by  his  martyrdom  he 
might  accomplish  what  by  his  life  and  teach- 
ing he  had  not  been  able  to  accomplish,  the 
beginning  of  the  conversion  of  the  world  from 
pagan  to  divine  ideals  of  life. 

One  of  the  prophets  had  forecast  his  pur- 
pose by  putting  in  his  mouth  the  saying,  "Lo, 
I  come  to  do  thy  will,  O  God."  That  proph- 
ecy Jesus  had  fulfilled.  His  will  had  been 
one  with  his  Father's  will.  His  life  desire 
was  to  know  that  will  and  do  it.  "I  seek," 
he  told  his  disciples,  "not  mine  own  will,  but 
the  will  of  him  that  sent  me."  He  believed 
that  God  had  a  plan  that  gave  meaning  and 
purpose  to  all  history,  and  to  carry  out  that 
plan  was  his  one  all-controlling  desire.  "He 
believed  that  he  and  his  followers  were  called 
on  to  build  roadways  over  which  the  hosts  of 
God  would  march   in  victory.      He  believed 


[38]     THE    LAST   DAYS   OF    JESUS    CHRIST 

that  he  was  the  representative  of  the  eternal 
purpose  of  God,  the  only  thing  in  life  worth 
Jiving  and  dying  for,  and  his  enthusiastic 
loyalty  is  his  dominant  quality  from  the  time 
he  came  into  Galilee  crying,  'The  kingdom  of 
God  is  at  hand,'  until  he  died  for  his  Cause 
on  Calvary."  ^ 

And  now  the  question  pressed  upon  him, 
as  it  presses  at  times  on  all  God's  children, 
Had  he  misunderstood  his  Father's  will? 
Was  the  supreme  desire  of  his  life  to  be  dis- 
appointed? Was  the  Father  to  be  disap- 
pointed in  his  child?  It  was  not  the  fear  of 
the  morrow's  anguish,  the  shame  and  spitting, 
the  cruel  flagellations  and  the  crown  of 
thorns,  the  shouting  of  the  mob  eager  for  his 
death  and  the  death  upon  the  cross  to  follow, 
that  made  the  anguish  of  Gethseraane.  Many 
a  soldier  on  French  soil  during  the  last  two 
years  has  faced  without  hesitation  physical 
pains  far  more  prolonged  than  Jesus  had  to 
bear.  The  insupportable  anguish  of  that  hour 
was  the  question.  Had  he  misunderstood  his 
Father's  will?  And  if  he  had  correctly  un- 
derstood it,  would  he  have  the  strength  to 
fulfill  it? 

The  Hebrew  psalmist  centuries  before  had 
prayed,  "Show  me  thy  paths,  O  Lord."   This 

*  "The  Manhood  of  the  Master,"  by  Harry  Emer- 
son Fosdick,  p.  56. 


THE    LAST    DAYS    OF    JESU»    CHRIST     [39] 

had  been  the  burden  of  Jesus*  prayer.  His 
will  had  been  so  to  present  the  kingdom  of 
God  that  the  people  would  accept  it,  a  hope 
which  he  had  expressed  in  a  characteristically 
homely  figure:  "How  often  would  I  have 
gathered  thy  children  together,  even  as  a  hen 
gathereth  her  chickens  under  her  wings!'* 
But  they  would  not.  And  now?  Now  he 
faced  not  merely  dishonor  and  death  to  him- 
self; he  faced  the  despair  of  his  disciples, 
the  wreckage  of  their  hopes,  the  heartbroken 
mother,  the  taunts  and  triumphs  of  his  foes, 
Israel's  foes,  God's  foes. 

Could  this  be  what  his  Father  willed? 
Could  triumph  for  God's  kingdom  come  out 
of  the  defeat  of  his  Christ?  And  if  the  en- 
durance of  that  defeat  for  himself  and  his 
friends  and  his  disciples  and  his  mother — if 
that  was  his  Father's  will,  would  he  have  the 
strength  to  fulfill  that  will?  *'Not  what  I 
will,  but  what  thou  wilt,"  was  not  a  prayer 
of  submissive  resignation.  It  was  a  prayer 
of  eager  consecration,  not  a  prayer  that  his 
Father  would  fulfill  His  Son's  will,  but  that 
the  Son  might  be  clear  of  vision  to  see  and 
strong  of  purpose  to  fulfill  his  Father's  will. 

It  sometimes  helps  us  to  understand  the 
experience  of  Jesus  if  we  read  it  in  the  light 
of  a  like  experience  of  one  of  his  followers — 


[40]     THE    LAST    DAYS    OF    JESUS    CHRIST 

perhaps  an  unacknowledged  and  unconscious 
follower. 

In  1864  Mrs.  Gurney,  an  English  Friend, 
wrote  a  letter  to  Abraham  Lincoln  which,  as 
far  as  I  know,  has  not  been  preserved;  it 
elicited  from  him  a  letter  from  which  I  make 
the  following  extract: 

We  hoped  for  a  happy  termination  of  this  ter- 
rible war  long  before  this;  but  God  knows  best, 
and  has  ruled  otherwise.  We  shall  yet  acknowl- 
edge his  wisdom  and  our  own  error  therein.  Mean- 
while we  must  work  earnestly  in  the  best  lights  he 
gives  us,  trusting  that  so  working  still  conduces 
to  the  great  ends  he  ordains.  Surely  he  intends 
some  great  good  to  follow  this  mighty  convulsion, 
which  no  mortal  could  make  and  no  mortal  could 
stay. 

Six  months  later,  in  his  inaugural  address, 
he  repeated  the  same  truth  in  words  which 
history  will  never  forget: 

Fondly  do  we  hope,  fervently  do  we  pray,  that 
this  mighty  scourge  of  war  may  speedily  pass 
away.  Yet  if  God  wills  that  it  continue  until  all 
the  wealth  piled  by  the  bondman's  two  hundred 
and  fifty  years  of  unrequited  toil  shall  be  sunk, 
and  until  every  drop  of  blood  drawn  with  the  lash 
shall  be  paid  by  another  drawn  with  the  sword,  as 
was  said  three  thousand  years  ago,  so  still  it  must 
be  said,  "The  judgments  of  the  Lord  are  true  and 
righteous  altogether." 

What  perplexities  clouded  Abraham  Lin- 
coln's mind,  what  insistent  doubts  whether  he 


THE    LAST    DAYS    OF    JESUS    CHRIST     [4«1] 

was  doing  the  will  of  God  assailed  him  with 
the  argument  that  many  good  men  and  true 
believed  the  war  for  which  he  was  so  largely 
responsible  was  not  God's  will?  We  do  not 
know.  He  wrote  no  journal,  left  no  autobiog- 
raphy, and  rarely,  if  ever,  disclosed  to  others 
the  secret  struggles  of  his  own  heart.  Dr. 
Harry  Emerson  Fosdick  characterizes  prayer 
as  "dominant  desire."  All  dominant  desire 
may  not  be  prayer,  but  nothing  is  prayer 
which  is  not  dominant  desire.  And  we  may 
be  sure  that  this  dominant  desire  for  the 
preservation  of  his  country  and  the  emanci- 
pation of  the  slave  could  not  have  sustained 
Abraham  Lincoln  through  those  four  years  of 
burden-bearing  if  the  dominant  desire  had 
not  also  been  a  prayer — a  prayer  that  he 
might  understand  the  will  of  God  and  that 
he  might  have  strength  and  courage  to  fulfill 
it. 

Every  earnest  soul  who  has  reached  the 
age  of  Jesus  has  had  occasion  to  pass  through 
his  own  Gethsemane.  Not  with  many  is  it 
any  such  Gethsemane  as  Abraham  Lincoln's; 
perhaps  not  with  any  such  a  Gethsemane  as 
that  of  Jesus.  Yet  who,  when  in  his  pilgrim- 
age he  has  come  to  the  Valley  of  the  Shadow 
of  Death,  has  not  questioned  with  himself 
whether  he  has  not  missed  his  way,  whether 
he  has  not  misunderstood  the  will  of  God, 


[42]     THE    LAST    DAYS    OP    JESUS    CHRIST 

whether,  if  he  has  understood  it  aright,  he 
has  the  courage  to  go  through  the  Valley  to 
the  unseen,  unknown,  and,  to  him,  uncertain 
life  which  lies  beyond? 

In  such  an  hour  what  we  need  is  not  resig- 
nation, not  submission  to  the  will  of  one  too 
strong  to  be  resisted,  but  consecration,  the 
absolute,  unreserved  dedication  of  one's  self 
to  the  service  of  one  whose  love  is  richer, 
wiser,  and  stronger  than  one's  own;  not  the 
prayer.  Save  me  from  the  Valley  of  the 
Shadow  of  Death;  but  the  prayer.  Grant  me 
the  rod  and  the  staff  which  will  enable  me  to 
go  through  the  Valley  of  the  Shadow  of 
Death  and  fear  no  evil;  never  the  prayer,  "If 
it  be  possible,  let  this  cup  pass  from  me,"  ex- 
cept as  it  is  accompanied  by  the  prayer,  "Not 
what  I  will,  but  what  thou  wilt." 

Christ's  prayer  was  not  unanswered.  Nor 
was  it  denied.  An  angel,  it  is  said,  appeared 
to  him  from  heaven  strengthening  him.  Did 
this  angel  come  as  art  has  customarily  repre- 
sented him,  robed  and  winged?  Or  did  he 
come  unseen,  unheard,  bringing  his  message 
to  the  heart  of  the  petitioner?  We  do  not 
know.  We  only  know  how  he  comes  to  us; 
and  we  may  reasonably  and  reverently  sur- 
mise that  as  he  comes  to  us  he  came  to  Jesus. 
What  the  answer  was  that  he  brought  the 
events  which  follow  make  clear. 


THE    LAST    DAYS    OF    JESUS    CHRIST     [43] 

An  ancient  artist,  Gaudenzio  Ferrari,  truly 
expresses  that  answer  in  a  painting  in 
which  the  angel  presents  to  the  kneeling 
Christ  a  cup  with  a  miniature  cross  surmount- 
ing it.  By  the  angel's  message  Christ's  ques- 
tion was  answered,  his  doubts  were  dissolved, 
his  perplexities  were  ended.  His  Father's 
will  was  made  clear  to  him,  and  with  the 
clearness  of  vision  came  the  strength  to  ful- 
fill that  will.  Ljn  all  the  tragedy  of  the  hours 
which  followed,  in  the  court  of  Caiaphas,  in 
the  judgment  hall  of  Pilate,  in  the  march  to 
death,  in  the  slow  agony  of  the  crucifixion, 
before  the  howling  mob,  the  taunting  priests, 
the  brokenhearted  disciples,  Jesus  was  the 
one  calm,  unexcited,  unperturbed  figure, 
dwelling  in  divine  peace  in  the  midst  of  the 
human  tempest,  sustained  by  the  assurance 
that  he  had  seen  clearly  and  would  be  able  to 
accomplish  completely  the  work  which  the 
Father  had  given  him  to  do.  I 


THE    LAST   DAYS   OP    JESUS    CHRIST    [45] 


draper 

Father — Thou  dost  so  often  seem  to  hide 
Thyself:  we  cannot  see  Thee;  Thou  art  so  of- 
ten silent:  we  cannot  hear  Thy  voice;  we  so 
often  miss  our  way:  we  long  to  follow  Thy 
Son  but  cannot  tell  which  path  he  would  take 
were  he  in  our  perplexity.  Then,  Father,  we 
know  that  he  also  has  experienced  our  per- 
plexity and  we  take  courage.  The  two  deep- 
est desires  of  our  hearts  we  bring  to  Thee. 
Take  away  the  dimness  of  our  vision:  enable 
us  to  see  clearly  what  is  Thy  will.  Take 
away  our  coward  fears :  give  us  courage  to  do 
that  will.  Help  us  never  to  pray,  never  to 
desire,  our  will  not  Thine  be  done:  always  to 
desire,  always  to  pray.  Thy  will  not  ours  be 
done.  Help  us  ever  to  make  it  our  will  to 
do  Thy  will.  This  we  ask  for  the  sake  of 
our  Leader  and  his  cause  to  whom  we  have 
dedicated  and  do  now  rededicate  our  wills^ 
our  powers,  our  lives.    Amen. 


RELIGION 

CHRIST  WITH  THE 
CHURCH  IN  THE  COURT  ROOM 


[48]     THE    LAST   DAYS    OF    JESUS    CHRIST 


What  laws,  my  blessed  Saviour,  hast  Thou 

broken 
That  SO  severe  a  sentence  should  be  spoken? 
How   hast   Thou   'gainst   Thy   Father's   will 

contended. 

In  what  offended? 

With  scourges,  blows,  and  spitting  they  re- 
viled Thee; 

They  crowned  Thy  brow  with  thorns,  while 
King  thej'^  styled  Thee; 

When   faint  with   pains   Thy  tortured  body 
suffered, 

Then  gall  they  offered. 

Say  wherefore  thus  by  woes  wast  Thou  sur- 
rounded ? 
Ah!  Lord,  for  my  transgressions  Thou  wast 

wounded : 
God  took  the  guilt  from  me,  who  should  have 
paid  it; 

On  Thee  He  laid  it. 

JoHANN  Hermann. 


THE    LAST    DAYS    OF    JESUS    CHRIST    [^9], 


The  trial  of  Jesus  before  the  Jewish  San- 
hedrin  is  the  most  important  ecclesiastical 
trial  in  the  history  of  the  race.  It  is  not  the 
only  one  in  which  time  has  reversed  the  posi- 
tion of  the  parties.  Then  Jesus  Christ  was 
on  trial  before  the  Church.  Now  the  Church 
is  on  trial  before  Jesus  Christ. 

Jesus  had  from  his  first  entrance  into  pub- 
lic life  given  himself  wholly  to  the  service  of 
his  fellow-men.  For  himself  he  neither  re- 
fused nor  asked  anything.  Proffered  hospi- 
tality he  always  accepted.  When  none  was 
proffered^  he  slept  with  his  cloak  about  him 
for  a  covering  and  the  sky  above  him  for  a 
roof.  Honors  he  never  sought,  and  he  re- 
ceived with  equanimity  alike  the  applause  and 
the  execrations  of  the  crowd.  His  pleasures 
were  of  the  simplest — boating  on  the  lake, 
walking  with  his  friends  in  the  fields.  He 
accepted  gladly  the  loyalty  of  spontaneous 
disciples,  but  sought  not  to  make  proselytes — 
neither  for  himself  nor  for  his  doctrines. 
(  When  the  people  crowded  about  him,  at- 
tracted by  his  winning  personality,  he  warned 
them  not  to  follow  him  unless  they  were  will- 
ing to  suffer  for  their  loyalty  at  the  hazard  of 
losing  property,  friends,  reputation,  life  it- 


[50]     THE    LAST    DAYS    OF    JESUS    CHRIST 

self.  When  he  told  the  rich  young  ruler  to 
sell  all  that  he  had  and  give  to  the  poor  if  he 
wished  to  become  one  of  the  disciples  in  im- 
mediate attendance  on  the  Master,  he  pro- 
posed the  standard  which  he  had  made  his 
own.  He  adopted  his  service  to  the  needs 
of  the  people.  Were  men  hungry,  he  fed 
them;  sick,  he  healed  them;  ignorant,  he 
taught  them;  discouraged,  he  heartened 
them;  self-satisfied,  he  rebuked  them;  de- 
spairing, he  forgave  them.  He  was  equally 
ready  to  minister  to  the  rich  and  to  the  poor, 
to  the  scholar  and  to  the  peasant,  to  the  Jew 
and  to  the  Gentile,  to  men  and  to  women,  to 
grown-ups  and  to  little  children,  to  the  vir- 
tuous and  to  the  vicious.  To  him  no  one  was 
outcast.  He  touched  the  loathsome  leper  when 
he  healed  him;  opened  his  heart  to  the  wan- 
dering lunatic  driven  out  as  accursed  by  God 
from  the  habitations  of  men;  and  stooped  and 
wrote  «ve  know  not  what,  upon  the  ground, 
'  that  he  might  not  look  upon  the  adulterous 
woman  shrinking  in  fear  and  shame  before 
him. 

And  now  he  was  put  on  trial  for  his  life  by 
the  Church  of  his  fathers.  Why  ?  What  had 
he  done.'*  And  who  were  his  accusers? 
riiistorically  the  Pharisees  were  the  reform- 
ers of  the  second  century  before  Christ.  Like 
the  Roman  Catholics  of  a  later  age,  they  sup- 


THE    LAST    DAYS   OF    JESUS    CHRIST     [51] 

plemented  the  Old  Testament  with  traditions ; 
these,  they  asserted,  had  come  down  from  the 
days  of  Moses.  Tliese  traditions,  which  they 
asserted  had  been  handed  down  orally  from 
generation  to  generation,  came  to  be  regarded 
as  of  equal  binding  force  with  the  Scriptures. 
Obedience,  not  merely  to  the  moral  laws  con- 
tained in  the  Old  Testament,  bat  to  a  great 
number  of  minute  ecclesiastical  regulations, 
became  to  the  Pharisees  the  essence  of  reli- 
gion. 

There  were  some  pure  precepts  in  their 
teaching;  the  characteristic  feature  of  their 
religion  was  a  pious  formalism  thinly  cover- 
ing an  intensely  selfish  spirit.  Religion 
tended  to  become  a  trade.  "Three  things," 
so  ran  their  proverb,  "will  make  thee  prosper 
— prayer,  alms,  and  penitence."  The  spirit 
even  of  their  ethics  was  based  on  the  maxim, 
"Consider  for  whom  thou  dost  work  and  what 
is  thy  master  who  will  pay  thee  thy  wages." 
They  fasted  and  prayed  with  great  regular- 
ity and  paid  tithes  of  all  they  possessed,  but 
all  was  done  for  hope  of  reward. 

The  simple  narratives  of  the  Gospel  writers 
do  not  give  us  the  details  of  the  accusation 
which  the  Pharisees  brought  against  their 
prisoner,  but  from  later  Jewish  writings  ^  and 

*  See  Isaac  Goldstein's  "Jesus  of  Nazareth"  and 
"Trial  of  Jesus"  by  M.  Salvador  and  M.  Dupin. 


[52]    THE    LAST   DAYS   OP    JESUS    CHRIST 

from  incidental  references  in  the  Gospel  we 
can  easily  reconstruct  the  charges  preferred 
against  him. 

It  was  charged  that  he  was  a  preacher  of 
turbulence  and  faction;  that  he  flattered  the 
poor  and  inveighed  against  the  rich;  that  he 
denounced  whole  cities,  as  Capernaum,  Beth- 
saida,  Chorazin;  that  he  gathered  about  him 
a  rabble  of  publicans,  harlots,  and  drunkards, 
under  a  pretense  of  reforming  them;  that 
he  subverted  the  laws  and  institutions  of  the 
Mosaic  commonwealth,  and  substituted  an  un- 
authorized legislation  of  his  own ;  that  he  dis- 
regarded not  only  all  distinctions  of  society, 
but  even  those  of  religion,  and  commended 
the  idolatrous  Samaritan  as  of  greater  worth 
than  the  holy  priest  and  pious  Levite;  that 
he  had  condemned  the  solemn  sanctions  of 
their  holy  religion,  had  sat  down  to  eat  with 
publicans  and  sinners  with  unwashed  hands, 
had  disregarded  the  Jewish  fasts  and  the  ob- 
ligations of  the  Jewish  Sabbath,  had  attended 
the  Jewish  feasts  with  great  irregularity  or 
not  at  all,  had  declared  that  God  could  be 
worshiped  in  any  other  place  as  well  as  in 
his  holy  temple,  had  openly  and  violently  in- 
terfered with  its  sacred  services  by  driving 
away  the  cattle  gathered  there  for  sacrifice, 
and,  above  all,  that  he  had  been  guilty  of  the 
most  heinous  crime  known  to  Jewish  law — 


THE    LAST    DAYS   OP    JESUS    CHRIST     [53] 

blasphemy — by  asserting  of  himself  that  he 
was  the  contemporary  of  Abraham^  the  Lord 
of  David,  the  superior  of  Solomon,  the  Son, 
even,  of  God.  That  he  had  been  guilty  of 
any  inhumanity  to  man,  that  he  had  violated 
any  moral  precepts  of  the  Mosaic  code  or 
taught  anything  inconsistent  with  the  spiritual 
teachings  of  the  great  prophets,  was  not  then 
and  never  has  been  since  charged  against  him. 

Thus  in  this  trial  were  put  in  sharp  con- 
trast two  conceptions  of  religion,  the  humani- 
tarian and  the  ceremonial — two  conceptions 
which  have  been  in  the  world  ever  since  Cain 
made  an  offering  to  Jehovah  and  almost 
simultaneously  slew  his  brother. 

The  one  conception  imagines  that  God  is 
best  pleased  by  a  scrupulous  obedience  to  cer- 
tain carefully  defined  regulations  and  a  punc- 
tilious observance  of  certain  prescribed  rit- 
uals. This  it  is  that  will  save  the  world  from 
the  wrath  of  God  or  the  gods.  The  other  be- 
lieves that  God  is  best  pleased  by  a  spontane- 
ous life  of  love,  service,  and  sacrifice.  This  it 
is  which  will  save  the  world  from  the  terrible 
evils  it  brings  upon  itself  by  its  selfishness, 
its  self-seeking,  its  self-indulgence. 

The  first  conception  was  held  in  Old  Testa- 
ment times  by  priests  who  put  emphasis  on 
the  importance  of  the  Levitical  code  and  the 
sacredness  of  the  Temple  sacrifices.     In  New 


[54]     THE    LAST    DAYS    OF    JESUS    CHRIST 

Testament  times  by  those  who  insisted  on 
fastings  and  ablutions^  on  synagogue  services 
and  priestly  sacrifices;  who  would  plan  the 
murder  of  their  opponent,  but  would  not  en- 
ter a  pagan  court  on  a  holy  day.  In  the 
Middle  Ages  by  priests  who  devoted  their 
lives  to  masses  and  confessions,  and  by  inquis- 
itors who  executed  as  criminals  those  who 
doubted  the  doctrines  or  neglected  the  serv- 
ices of  the  Church.  In  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury by  a  Church  which  preached  a  "code  of 
ethical  laws"  to  select  congregations  and 
left  the  common  people  unshepherded  and 
uncared  for.  In  New  England  by  Puritans 
who  made  much  of  understanding  foreordina- 
tion  and  decrees,  much  of  a  scrupulous  ob- 
servance of  Sabbath  regulations,  and  made 
money  out  of  selling  rum  to  the  heathen  and 
importing  slaves  from  heathendom. 

The  second  conception  of  religion  was  held 
in  Old  Testament  times  by  prophets  who 
taught  that  what  God  required  was  doing 
justly,  loving  mercy,  and  walking  humbly 
with  God.  In  New  Testament  times  by  the 
Apostle  who  declared  that  greatest  of  all  vir- 
tues is  the  love  that  sufFereth  long  and  still 
is  kind.  In  the  Middle  Ages  by  preaching 
friars  who  ministered  of  the  truth  to  the  poor 
of  England  and  by  nuns  whose  lives  were  un- 
selfishly devoted  to  ministering  to  the  bodies 


THE    LAST   DAYS    OF    JESUS    CHRIST     [55] 

of  the  poor.  In  the  eighteenth  century  by 
Wesley,  who  abandoned  tlie  ecclesiasticism  of 
his  early  years  for  a  lifelong  itinerant  min- 
istry to  the  neglected  and  the  outcast.  In 
New  England  by  John  Eliot  and  Jonathan 
Edwards  preaching  to  the  Indians. 

Jesus  did  not  merely  go  about  doing  good. 
He  did  not  "turn  aside  to  make  the  weary 
glad."  ^  To  make  the  weary  glad  was  his  life 
mission.  This  was  his  method  of  achieving 
the  world's  salvation.  In  his  first  recorded 
sermon  in  the  synagogue  at  Nazareth  he  de- 
clared this  to  be  the  object  for  which  he  was 
sent:  "The  Spirit  of  the  Lord  is  upon  me,  be- 
cause he  hath  anointed  me  to  preach  the  Gos- 
pel to  the  poor;  he  hath  sent  me  to  heal  the 
brokenhearted,  to  preach  deliverance  to  the 
captives,  and  recovering  of  sight  to  the  blind, 
to  set  at  liberty  them  that  are  bruised,  to 
preach  the  acceptable  year  of  the  Lord." 
When  John  in  prison,  puzzled  by  the  fact 
that  Jesus  had  seemingly  done  nothing  ef- 
fective for  the  emancipation  of  the  Jews,  sent 
his  disciples  to  ask,  "Art  thou  he  that  should 

^When  the  liOrd  of  Love  was  here, 
Happy  hearts  to  him  were  dear. 

Though  his  heart  was  sad; 
Worn  and  lowly  for  our  sake. 
Yet  he  turned  aside  to  make 
AU  the  weary  glad. 

Stopford   a.   Brooke. 


[56^     THE    LAST   DAYS    OF    JESUS    CHRIST 

comC;,  or  do  we  look  for  another?"  Jesus 
sent  back  the  account  of  his  ministry  of  love 
as  the  sole  evidence  of  his  Messiahship. 
"Go/'  he  said,  "and  show  John  again  those 
things  which  ye  do  hear  and  see ;  the  blind  re- 
ceive their  sight,  and  the  lame  walk,  the  lepers 
are  cleansed,  and  the  deaf  hear,  the  dead  are 
raised  up  and  the  poor  have  the  Gospel 
preached  to  them."  And  when  at  the  close  of 
his  Temple  teaching  he  pictured  to  his  dis- 
ciples the  last  judgment,  the  standard  he 
set  up  was  not  scrupulous  obedience  to  regu- 
lations, nor  punctilious  observance  of  ritual, 
nor  accurate  understanding  of  theological 
truth,  but  practical  charity.  It  was  those  who 
had  given  food  to  the  hungry,  drink  to  the 
thirsty,  hospitality  to  the  stranger,  clothing 
to  the  naked,  personal  fellowship  to  the  sick 
and  the  imprisoned,  that  were  welcomed  to 
the  palace  of  the  King. 

Love  is  the  only  wedding  garment  needed 
to  furnish  the  guest  for  the  wedding  feast. 
The  kingdom  of  God  is  the  kingdom  of  Love. 
And  when  the  spirit  of  love  animates  the 
children  of  men,  then,  and  not  before,  will 
come  on  the  earth  that  kingdom  for  which  the 
Master  bids  his  followers  work  and  pray. 


THE   LAST  DAYS  OF   JESUS   CHRIST     [57] 


From  shams,  false  pretense,  and  formalism. 
Spirit  of  God,  deliver  us.  From  doing  deeds 
of  charity  as  servants  in  hope  of  reward. 
Spirit  of  God,  deliver  us.  From  shallow  con- 
formity to  custom,  from  seeking  the  applause 
of  our  fellow  men,  from  pride  of  good  works, 
self-conceit,  and.  self-righteousness.  Spirit  of 
God,  deliver  us.  From  mere  unthinking  imi- 
tation of  others,  even  of  our  Master,  in  care- 
less forgetfulness  of  the  inner  purpose  of  his 
life.  Spirit  of  God,  deliver  us.  Endue  us 
with  our  Master's  spirit  that  all  our  acts, 
whether  of  service  or  of  worship,  may  be  the 
spontaneous  expression  of  that  life  of  faith, 
and  hope,  and  love  which  Thou  dost  freely 
give  to  us  that  we  may  be  in  very  truth  Thy 
children.    Amen. 


FAITH 

CHRIST  WITH  THE 
SKEPTIC  IN  THE  PRiETORIUM 


[60]    THE   LAST   DAYS   OF    JESUS    CHRIST 


God  is  never  so  far  off 

As  even  to  be  near. 
He  is  within^  our  spirit  is 

The  home  He  holds  most  dear. 

To  think  of  Him  as  by  our  side. 

Is  almost  as  untrue 
As  to  remove  His  throne  beyond 

Those  skies  of  starry  blue. 

So  all  the  while  I  thought  myself 
Homeless,  forlorn  and  weary, 

Missing  my  joy,  I  walked  the  earth 
Myself  God's  sanctuary. 

Frederick  William  Faber. 


THE    LAST    DAYS    OF    JESUS    CHRIST     [6l]' 


"What  is  truth?"  said  jesting  Pilate,  and 
would  not  wait  for  an  answer. 

Nothing  strange  in  that.  What  was  truth 
in  that  hour.''  What  protection  did  it  afford 
against  a  mob  maddened  by  an  egotistical  na- 
tionalism which  it  mistook  for  patriotism  and 
a  malignant  bigotry  which  it  mistook  for  re- 
ligion; what  protection  against  the  scheming 
ecclesiastical  politicians .  who  had  cunningly 
planned  for  this  hour  and  aroused  the  pas- 
sionate prejudices  of  the  mob  to  serve  their 
purpose;  what  protection  against  the  disap- 
pointed ambition  of  a  treacherous  disciple? 
The  clamorous  welcome  of  the  Galileans  on 
the  first  day  of  the  week,  "Crown  him !  Crown 
him!"  was  drowned  by  the  clamorous  exe- 
cration of  the  mob  on  Friday,  "Crucify  him ! 
Crucify  him !"  Who  could  then  foresee  that 
to-day  no  enemy  would  be  left  to  defend  the 
crucifixion,  while  a  throng  which  no  man  can 
number,  Jew  and  Gentile,  Christian  and  pa- 
gan, would  join  with  the  skeptic  John  Stuart 
Mill  in  declaring  that  there  is  no  "better 
translation  of  the  rule  of  virtue  from  the  ab- 
stract into  the  concrete  than  to  endeavor  so 
to  live  that  Christ  would  approve  our  life," 
and  with  the  rationalist  Dr.  Hooykaas  in  the 


[62]     THE    LAST   DAYS    OF    JESUS    CHRIST 

reverential  acclaim:  "Thy  triumph  is  secure. 
Thy  name  shall  be  borne  on  the  breath  of  the 
winds  through  all  the  world;  and  with  that 
name  no  thought  except  of  goodness,  noble- 
ness, and  love  shall  link  itself  in  the  bosoms 
of  thy  brothers  who  have  learned  to  know 
thee  and  what  thou  art.  Thy  name  shall  be 
the  symbol  of  salvation  to  the  weak  and  wan- 
dering, of  restoration  to  the  fallen  and  the 
guilty,  of  hope  to  all  who  sink  in  comfortless 
despair.  Thy  name  shall  be  the  mighty  cry 
of  progress  in  freedom,  in  truth,  in  purity — 
the  living  symbol  of  the  dignity  of  man,  the 
epitome  of  all  that  is  noble,  lofty,  and  holy 
upon  earth." 

This  self-conscious  age,  sitting  in  judg- 
ment on  itself,  declares  itself  to  be  a  skeptical 
age.  Schumann  musically  interprets  its 
spirit  by  his  questioning  "Warum?"  (Why?)  ; 
Goldwin  Smith,  by  his  essay  "Guesses  at 
Truth",  J.  Cotter  Morison,  by  his  proposal 
to  substitute  "The  Service  of  Man"  for  the 
abandoned  service  of  God.  This  skepticism 
is  not  a  mere  doubt  of  ancient  creeds,  not 
merely  a  doubt  or  a  discarding  of  the  Church 
or  the  Bible  as  an  authority,  not  merely 
Tennyson's  "honest  doubt."  ^     It  is  a  doubt 

*  There  lives  more  faith  in  honest  doubt, 
Believe  me,  than  in  half  the  creeds. 

— In  Memobiam. 


THE    LAST   DAYS   OP    JESUS    CHRIST     [63] 

sometimes  of  the  value  of  truth,  sometimes 
of  the  possibility  of  attaining  it. 

It  is  expressed  by  the  agnostic,  who  tells 
us  that  "the  Great  Companion  is  dead";  that 
at  death  our  friend  has  slid  down  into  "the 
somber,  unechoing  gulf  of  nothingness";  that 
there  is  so  little  basis  for  moral  judgments 
that  it  is  difficult  to  find  a  man  so  virtuous  as 
to  deserve  a  good  supper  or  so  wicked  as  to 
deserve  a  good  drubbing.^ 

It  is  expressed  by  the  safe  man  who,  for 
an  eager  search  for  the  truth,  substitutes  an 
eager  search  for  peace ;  "who  never  enunciates 
a  truth  without  guarding  himself  against  be- 
ing supposed  to  exclude  the  contradictory; 
who  holds  that  Scripture  is  the  only  author- 
ity, yet  that  the  Church  is  to  be  deferred  to; 
that  faith  only  justifies,  yet  that  it  does  not 
justify  without  works;  that  grace  does  not 
depend  on  the  sacraments,  yet  is  not  given 
without  them;  that  bishops  are  a  divine  ordi- 
nance, yet  those  who  have  them  not  are  in  the 
same  religious  condition  as  those  who  have."  ^ 

It  is  expressed  by  the  Athenians,  who 
"spend  their  time  in  nothing  else  but  either 
to  tell  or  hear  some  new  thing";  who  throng 
a  forum  and  occasionally  a  church,  not  in 
search  of  truth,  but  in  search  of  the  latest 

nV.  K.  Clifford;  John  Morley;  David  Hume. 
*  Cardinal  Newman. 


[64]    THE    LAST   DAYS    OF    JESUS    CHRIST 

fashion  in  philosophy;  who  change  their 
opinion  as  frequently  and  as  readily  as  a 
fashionable  woman  changes  her  bonnet;  who 
deny  every  affirmative  and  affirm  every  nega- 
tive; who  "make  use  of  their  reason  to  inquire 
and  debate_,  but  not  to  fix  and  determine."  * 

It  is  expressed  by  the  cynics  who  imagine 
that  to  believe  anything  is  a  sign  of  a  de- 
cadent intellect,  and  pride  themselves  in  be- 
ing in  advance  of  their  age  because  they  imi- 
tate the  toleration  of  the  ancient  Romans,  who 
regarded  all  religious  creeds  and  forms  as 
equally  false,  but  also  equally  useful  as  a  po- 
litical convenience. 

How  shall  the  Church  of  Christ  meet  this 
spirit  of  skepticism?  How  did  its  Master 
and  leader  meet  this  spirit  of  skepticism  in 
his  own  age?  What  answer  did  he  give  by 
his  life  to  the  half-contemptuous  question, 
"What  is  truth?" 

Truth  was  not  to  him  an  opinion,  tenta- 
tively held,  for  further  investigation  and  sub- 
ject to  future  reversal.  It  might  almost  be 
said  of  Jesus  that  he  had  no  opinions — as 
thus  defined. 

Nor  was  truth  to  him  an  intellectual  con- 
viction borrowed  from  others.  He  did  not  de- 
rive his  faith  from  the  beliefs  of  his  fore- 
fathers or  the  affirmations  of  the  Scriptures. 

*  Montaigne. 


THE    LAST   DAYS   OF    JESUS    CHRIST     [65] 

Nor  was  it  a  discovery  ascertained  by  in- 
vestigation and  confirmed  and  buttressed  by 
arguments.  There  is  no  indication  in  his 
teaching  of  a  search  after  truth;  no  outcry 
like  that  of  the  Psalmist,  "As  the  hart  pant- 
eth  after  the  water  brooks,  so  panteth  my  soul 
after  thee,  O  God;"  no  sign  of  personal  per- 
plexity like  that  of  Paul's  "perplexed,  but 
not  in  despair."  Compare  his  "Father,  I 
knew  that  thou  hearest  me  always,"  with 
Job's  "O  that  I  knew  where  I  might  find 
him  V*  Read  his  assurance  to  liis  disciples  in 
his  last  message  to  them,  "And  I  will  pray 
the  Father,  and  he  shall  give  you  another 
Comforter,  that  he  may  abide  with  you  for- 
ever;" then  compare  with  it  the  last  message 
of  Socrates  to  his  friends  before  his  death, 
"And  where  shall  we  find  a  good  charmer  of 
our  fears,  Socrates,  when  you  are  gone?" 
"Hellas,"  he  replied,  "is  a  large  place,  Cebes, 
and  has  many  good  men,  and  there  are  bar- 
barous races  not  a  few;  seek  for  him  among 
them  all,  far  and  wide,  sparing  neither  pains 
nor  money,  for  there  is  no  better  way  of 
using  your  money." 

We  all  know  some  truths  which  are  ex- 
periences. Long  before  the  child  learns  in 
school  about  the  attraction  of  gravitation  he 
discovers,  in  his  first  lessons  in  walking,  that 
if  he  is  not  careful  he  will  fall.    He  does  not 


[66]     THE    LAST    DAYS    OF    JESUS    CHRIST 

formulate  the  law,  nor  define  it,  nor  know 
the  methods  or  limits  of  its  operation.  But 
he  has  an  experience  of  it,  and  that  experi- 
ence no  argument  gave  and  no  argument  can 
take  away.  So,  if  he  has  a  happy  home, 
long  before  he  studies  moral  philosophy  he 
has  an  experience  of  parental  love  and  care 
and  a  responding  experience  of  filial  obliga- 
tions, honor  and  affection. 

In  his  teaching  Jesus  assumed  that  there 
is  in  all  men  an  undeveloped  capacity  to  ex- 
perience the  truth.  He  acted  on  the  assump- 
tion that  truth  fits  the  human  soul  as  a  well- 
made  glove  fits  the  hand;  that  truth  and  the 
soul  are  made  for  each  other.  He  identified 
truth  and  life,  and  for  the  most  part  taught 
only  those  truths  that  are  a  part  of  life.  He 
dealt  not  in  surmises,  opinions,  hypotheses; 
he  dealt  only  in  convictions,  and  only  in  those 
convictions  that  have  their  roots  in  ennobled 
human  nature.  In  what  we  call  the  subcon- 
scious self  he  saw  the  seeds  of  truth  and  life, 
and  his  appeal  was  aimed  to  draw  them  out, 
as  the  sun  draws  out  the  slumbering  seed  in 
spring.  He  often  addressed  questions  to 
those  who  questioned  him  and  incited  them 
to  find  in  themselves  the  answer  to  their  own 
questions.  Thus  he  asked  the  rich  young 
ruler,  "Why  callest  thou  me  good.'*  there  is 
none  good  but  one,  that  is  God;"  and  to  the 


THE    LAST   DAYS  OP    JESUS    CHRIST     [67] 

scribe  asking  which  is  the  chief  command- 
ment, he  replied,  "How  readest  thou?"  and 
called  on  the  group  hearing  his  parable  of 
the  Good  Samaritan  to  tell  him,  "Which  now 
of  these  three  thinkest  thou  was  neighbor  to 
him  that  fell  among  thieves?'* 

In  studying  Paul's  epistles  the  reader  can 
often  see  that  the  Apostle,  to  convince  others, 
uses  the  arguments  by  which  he  has  first 
convinced  himself.  Jesus  rarely  argues.  He 
affirms.  His  most  solemn  and  weighty  affir- 
mations are  often  preceded  by  the  words, 
"Verily,  verily,  I  say  unto  you."  So  far  from 
defending  a  tradition  he  often  sets  his  simple 
affirmation  against  it:  "Ye  have  heard  that 
it  hath  been  said,  but  I  say  unto  you."  When 
he  cites  Scripture,  it  is  generally  as  an  illus- 
tration, not  as  an  argument.  He  puts  his  per- 
sonal experience  above  Scripture:  "Ye  search 
the  Scriptures;  for  in  them  ye  think  ye  have 
eternal  life:  and  they  are  they  which  testify 
of  me.  And  ye  will  not  come  to  me,  that  ye 
might  have  life.'* 

All  spiritual  truths  were  thus  elemental  in 
Jesus.  God,  immortality,  the  life  eternal,  the 
laws  of  righteousness,  were  no  convictions  im- 
ported from  the  past,  no  opinions  derived 
from  and  supported  by  philosophical  argu- 
ments. They  were  a  part  of  his  self-con- 
scious self.     He  says  of  himself,  "I  am  the 


[68]     THE    LAST    DAYS    OF    JESUS    CHRIST 

truth!"  Paul  says  of  him,  "He  cannot  deny 
himself,'*  And  to  the  divinely  conscious  sense 
of  truth — perhaps  I  should  rather  say  to  the 
unawakened  capacity  to  become  conscious  of 
it,  which  all  normal  men  possess — he  habit- 
ually appealed  in  his  public  ministry.  The 
awakening  life  responded  to  his  words;  and 
the  people  were  astonished  at  his  teaching  be- 
cause he  taught  them  as  one  having  authority 
and  not  as  the  scribes.  The  authority  was  the 
divinely  awakened  response  in  their  own  souls. 

The  Church  must  find  in  the  spirit  and 
method  of  its  Master  the  answer  to  be  given 
to  this  age  asking,  sometimes  seriously,  some- 
times carelessly,  sometimes  cynically,  Pilate's 
question,  "What  is  truth?" 

It  cannot  find  in  the  recorded  experiences 
of  the  past  an  answer  which  will  either  satisfy 
the  serious  or  confound  the  cynic.  The  age 
will  not  be  content,  it  ought  not  to  be  content, 
with  convictions  imported  whether  from  the 
Reformed  creeds  of  the  seventeenth  century, 
or  from  the  Catholic  creeds  of  the  first  four 
centuries,  or  from  the  pre-Christian  creeds 
of  the  Hebrew  prophets. 

Certainly  it  will  not  be  content  with  hy- 
potheses derived  by  the  much-vaunted  "scien- 
tific method"  and  buttressed  and  defended  by 
biological  evolution  and  literary  criticism. 
The  beliefs  of  the  past  may  help  to  confirm 


THE    LAST   DAYS   OP    JESUS    CHRIST     [69] 

the  believer  in  his  present  faith.  The  modern 
scientific  and  literary  method  may  help  to 
clear  away  some  intellectual  difficulties  which 
perplex  him.  But  it  is  the  life  which  is  the 
light  of  the  world.  And  the  doubts  of  the 
world  will  never  be  solved  by  either  the  old 
theology  or  the  new  theology.  They  will  be 
solved  only  by  a  new  life,  a  life  in  the  Church 
which  is  a  present  experience  of  a  living  God, 
bringing  with  him  to  the  soul  which  accepts 
him  a  present  experience  of  forgiveness  that 
relieves  from  the  burden  of  past  errors  and 
sins,  and  a  present  inspiration  that  gives 
power  for  future  achievement. 

That  it  is  not  theological  opinions  which 
have  made  effective  preachers  of  truth  is  evi- 
dent from  the  fact  that  Savonarola  and 
Luther,  Massillon  and  Wesley,  Phillips 
Brooks,  and  Dwight  L.  Moody,  have  been  ef- 
fective preachers  of  the  truth.  It  is  only  the 
truth  which  transcends  all  definitions,  the 
truth  that  is  more  than  an  ancient  tradition 
or  a  modern  hypothesis,  the  truth  that  is  a 
living  experience,  which  can  endow  the 
Church  with  power  to  silence  the  sneers  of 
the  cynic  or  to  satisfy  and  relieve  the  per- 
plexities of  the  honest  doubter. 


THE   LAST  DAYS  OF   JESUS   CHRIST    [71] 


Father — keep  us  from  idle  curiosity;  from 
idle  credulity;  from  prejudice  of  mind  and 
blindness  of  heart.  Inspire  in  us  the  readi- 
ness to  accept  truth  whoever  may  bring  it. 
Make  us  eager  to  know  the  truth;  but  suffer 
us  never  to  be  content  with  knowledge.  Make 
us  eager  to  act  truly  and  to  be  true.  May  Thy 
truth  make  us  free:  free  from  false  teaching, 
false  fears,  false  hopes,  false  ideals.  Suffer 
us  never  to  accept  falsehood  because  false- 
hood is  comfortable ;  never  to  be  false  to  our- 
selves and  to  Thee  because  falseness  is  easy. 
As  we  grow  older  may  we  grow  wiser — grow 
in  our  understanding  of  life  and  in  our  ac- 
quaintance with  Thee.  May  our  wisdom  be 
iirst  pure,  then  peaceful,  always  the  enlight- 
ener  of  our  conscience,  the  servant  of  our 
love,  the  minister  to  our  life.  So  may  we 
grow  into  the  likeness  of  him  who  is  the  way, 
the  truths  the  life — Thy  Son,  our  Saviour. 
Amen. 


SACRIFICE 

CHRIST  ALONE 
UPON  THE  CROSS 


[74]    THE    LAST   DAYS   OF    JESUS    CHRIST 


Jesn,  whelmed  in  fears  unknown. 
With  our  evil  left  alone, 
While  no  light  from  Heaven  is  shown: 
Hear  us_,  Holy  Jesu. 

When  we  vainly  seem  to  pray. 
And  our  hope  seems  far  away, 
In  the  darkness  be  our  stay: 
Hear  us,  Holy  Jesu. 

Though  no  Father  seem  to  hear. 
Though  no  light  our  spirits  cheer. 
Tell  our  faith  that  God  is  near: 
Hear  us.  Holy  Jesu. 

Thomas  B.  Pollock. 


THE   LAST   DAYS   OF    JESUS    CHRIST     [75] 


"There  are/*  says  F.  W.  Robertson,  "two 
kinds  of  solitude:  the  first  consisting  of  insu- 
lation in  space,  the  other  of  isolation  of  the 
spirit.  The  first  is  simply  separation  by  dis- 
tance. .  .  .  The  other  is  loneliness  of  soul." 
Jesus  on  the  cross  was  one  of  a  great  multi- 
tude. But  what  companionship  of  soul  was 
possible  for  him  with  the  victorious  priests 
saying  to  each  other,  with  malignant,  smiling 
triumph,  "He  saved  others ;  himself  he  cannot 
save,"  or  with  the  indifferent  soldiers  gam- 
bling for  the  possession  of  the  robe  which  love 
had  wrought  for  him;  or  with  the  careless 
spectators  drawn  to  the  place  by  the  news 
of  a  triple  execution ;  or  with  the  cursing  brig- 
and on  one  side  of  him;  or  with  the  repentant 
brigand  looking  back  on  a  life  dedicated  to 
lust  and  plunder. 

There  were  his  mother  and  his  much-loved 
disciple  at  the  foot  of  the  cross  and  two  faith- 
ful women.  But  they  did  not  and  could  not 
comprehend  the  true  significance  of  that 
hour.  They  saw  with  pitying  anguish  their 
Master  dying,  and  with  him  dying  their  hope 
that  he  was  to  be  the  world's  Messiah.  They 
needed  the  comforting  strength  which  by  his 


[76]     THE    LAST    DAYS    OF    JESUS    CHRIST 

dying  words  Jesus  gave  to  them ;  comfort  and 
strength  they  could  not  give  to  him. 

And  now  a  greater  loneliness  fell  upon  hira 
— greater  than  that  in  the  childhood  vision  of 
his  Father's  commission  in  the  Temple,  which 
even  his  mother  could  not  comprehend; 
greater  than  that  of  the  long  and  perplexed 
pondering  in  the  wilderness  upon  the  problem 
of  his  life-work;  greater  than  those  hours 
which  he  spent  at  night  when  he  went  apart 
by  himself  to  recruit  his  courage  and  his 
strength  by  prayer;  greater  than  his  solitude 
in  the  Garden,  in  the  court-room,  or  at  Pilate's 
judgment  seat.  He  had  only  partially  fore- 
told this  hour — had  he  more  than  partially 
foreseen  it? — when  he  told  his  disciples: 
"The  hour  cometh,  yea,  is  now  come,  that  ye 
shall  be  scattered,  every  man  to  his  own,  and 
shrill  leave  me  alone :  and  yet  I  am  not  alone, 
because  the  Father  is  with  me." 

For  now  the  Father  was  not  with  him. 
He  was  left,  or  at  least  seemed  to  himself  to 
be  left,  to  face  this  trial  hour  without  even 
his  Father's  companionship.  It  was  the  only 
experience  in  his  life  that  wrung  from  him  a 
cry  of  self-pitj'-.  The  nation  had  rejected 
him,  his  mother  and  his  brothers  had  thought 
that  he  was  beside  himself,  the  fickle  multi- 
tude had  deserted  him,  the  Church  had  con- 
spired to  slay  him,  his  disciples  had  scattered 


THE    LAST    DAYS    OP    JESUS    CHRIST     [77] 

every  man  to  his  own,  the  one  disciple  who 
understood  him  best  did  not  understand  him 
now.  But  never  till  the  consciousness  of  his 
Father's  presence  was  denied  him  did  he  ut- 
ter a  word  of  remonstrance  or  an  appeal  for 
help. 

We  may  well  believe  that  this  experience 
came  to  Jesus  because  it  was  his  mission  as 
our  guide  and  companion  to  pass  through 
every  experience  of  trial  common  to  man.  And 
this  experience  of  "forsaken"  is  not  uncom- 
mon. Jeremiah  describes  this  experience  as 
"the  wilderness,  ...  a  land  of  deserts  and 
of  pits,  ...  a  land  of  drought  and  of  the 
shadow  of  death,  ...  a  land  that  no  man 
passed  through,  and  where  no  man  dwelt." 
Bunyan  allegorizes  this  experience  in  his  pic- 
ture of  Christian  going  alone  through  the 
Valley  of  the  Shadow  of  Death  where  "one  of 
the  wicked  ones  got  behind  him  and  stepped 
up  softly  to  him,  and  whisperingly  suggested 
many  grievous  blasphemies  to  him,  which  he 
verily  thought  had  proceeded  from  his  own 
mind."  Tennyson  portrays  this  experience  in 
Sir  Percival's  quest  for  the  Holy  Grail: 


But  even  while  I  drank  the  brook,  and  ate 
The  goodly  apples,  all  these  things  at  once 
Fell  into  dust,  and  I  was  left  alone. 
And  thirsting,  in  a  land  of  sand  and  thorns. 


[78]     THE    LAST    DAYS    OF    JESUS    CHRIST 

R.  E.  Prothero,  in  his  interesting  volume  on 
"The  Psalms  in  Human  Life/'  gives  histori- 
cal illustrations  of  this  experience:  the  Arch- 
bishop of  Canterbury  found  the  Crusaders  so 
given  over  to  licentiousness  that  his  chaplain 
declared,  "God  is  not  in  the  camp";  and 
Richard  I,  deserted  by  his  followers  and  see- 
ing that  the  crusade  had  failed,  thought  him- 
self deserted  by  God  also,  and  cried  out  in 
Christ's  own  words,  "My  God,  my  God,  why 
hast  thou  forsaken  me?" 

This  experience  of  "forsaken"  is  sometimes 
a  national  experience.  Modern  scholars  think 
that  many  of  the  psalms  which  were  formerly 
regarded  as  individual  experiences  were  really 
composed  and  sung  as  experiences  of  the  na- 
tion. If  so,  then  such  psalms  as  the  Forty- 
second  and  the  Forty-third  may  perhaps  be 
regarded  as  the  expression  of  the  struggle  of 
faith  in  a  time  when  the  people  of  Israel 
seemed  to  be  forsaken  by  their  God.  As 
"My  Country,  'Tis  of  Thee,"  when  sung  by 
a  congregation,  expresses  a  feeling  of  na- 
tional patriotism,  so  these  psalms  and  others 
like  them  would  express  an  experience  of  na- 
tional loneliness: 


My  soul  thirsteth  for  God,  for  the  living  God: 
when  shall  I  come  and  appear  before  God?  My 
tears  have  been  my  meat  day  and  night,  while  they 
continually  say  unto  me.  Where  is  thy  God? 


THE    LAST    DAYS    OP    JESUS    CHRIST     [79] 

Just  now  there  are  not  a  few  who,  with 
Job,  cannot  perceive  God  in  current  events, 
and  so  conclude  either  that  there  is  no  God 
or  that  God  dwells  in  beatific  indifference  to 
human  sin  and  suffering,  or  that  he  is  at  best 
a  feeble  God  who  is  doing  the  little  that  he 
can,  but  cannot  do  much.  Christ's  teaching 
seems  to  me  to  give  a  different  solution  to  our 
perplexity.  In  a  story,  in  substance  more 
than  once  repeated,  he  compares  the  kingdom 
of  God  to  an  estate  left  by  the  lord  of  the 
estate  in  charge  of  his  servants  while  he  goes 
on  a  journey  into  a  far  country,  a  journey 
which  lasts  for  a  long  time.  He  implies  that 
God  does  leave  us  at  times  to  ourselves  that 
we  may  learn  in  the  school  of  experience  what 
we  can  learn  in  no  other  way.  For  it  is  in 
that  school  that  we  best  learn  the  lessons  that 
really  determine  our  character  and  control 
our  conduct. 

I  have  a  friend  who  seems  to  me  to  possess 
what  I  will  call  the  teaching  genius.  She  has 
charge  of  a  room  of  young  girl  pupils.  She 
left  them  alone  one  day,  telling  them  before 
she  went  that  she  trusted  to  their  honor 
to  preserve  order  in  her  absence.  When  she 
returned,  she  found  the  room  a  scene  of  wild, 
hilarious  disorder.  She  might  have  resolved 
that  never  again  would  she  absent  herself 
from  the  room.    Or,  if  she  was  compelled  to 


[80]    THE    LAST   DAYS    OF    JESUS    CHRIST 

do  SO,  that  she  would  always  leave  a  monitor 
to  keep  order.  But  she  believed  that  it  was 
more  important  to  teach  her  pu^^ils  self-con- 
trol than  to  teach  them  geography  or  arithme- 
tic or  English.  The  course  she  pursued  I 
need  not  here  describe;  indeed,  I  could  not 
describe  it,  for  the  essence  of  that  method 
was  the  substitution  of  personal  influence  for 
mere  governmental  authority,  and  the  meth- 
ods of  personal  influence  defy  description. 
Suffice  it  to  say  that  less  than  six  months  later 
she  was  detained  in  the  principal's  room  after 
the  close  of  recess,  was  asked  by  the  princi- 
pal to  take  two  visitors  up  to  her  room  and 
let  them  see  her  class  work,  and  entered  to 
find  that  the  girls  were  reading  the  Shakes- 
peare appointed  for  that  hour  with  the  self- 
elected  president  of  the  class  acting  as  their 
leader.  The  teacher  had  accomplished  her 
purpose.  Leaving  them  alone,  she  had  trained 
them  in  self-control  as  she  could  not  have 
done  had  she  always  remained  with  them. 

Thus  God  is  teaching  his  children  the 
meaning  of  human  brotherhood. 

The  ideal  of  a  human  brotherhood  trans- 
cending all  limits  of  race,  religion,  or  nation- 
ality has  been  for  centuries  before  the  sons  of 
men.  Probably  there  has  been  no  century 
since  Jesus  preached  human  brotherhood  in 
Palestine   when    there    has    not    been    some 


THE   I*AST    DAYS    OF    JESUS    CHRIST     [81] 

prophet  or  poet  to  give  to  his  generation  a  vi- 
sion of  that  splendid  ideal.  At  the  close  of  the 
eighteenth  and  the  beginning  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  a  few  radicals  attempted  to 
realize  that  ideal  in  a  government  "conceived 
in  liberty  and  dedicated  to  the  proposition 
that  all  men  are  created  equal."  In  the  terri- 
ble school  of  experience  our  own  country. 
North  and  South,  learned  the  incongruity  of 
African  slavery  with  that  ideal,  and  it  was 
abolished.  Since  that  time  the  world  has 
had  in  the  unapproachable  prosperity  of  this 
country  a  demonstration  that  it  is  possible  for 
men  of  different  religious  faiths,  different  so- 
cial conditions,  different  nationalities,  differ- 
ent races,  to  live  together,  united  by  a  com- 
mon human  aspiration  and  a  mutual  respect. 
We  have  not  practiced  our  avowed  principles 
consistently ;  we  have  not  lived  up  to  our  pro- 
fessed ideal.  But  even  so,  in  the  imperfect 
realization  of  our  ideal,  in  the  imperfect  prac- 
tice of  our  avowed  principles,  we  have  been 
rewarded  far  beyond  our  deserts. 

Meanwhile  the  common  people  of  Europe 
— of  England,  France,  Italy,  and  in  less  de- 
gree of  Russia  and  Germany — have  perceived 
this  ideal  of  human  brotherhood  and  have  in 
some  measure  accepted  it  as  their  own.  But 
they  have  been  confronted  by  a  very  different 
ideal,  not  confined  to  Germany,  but  in  Ger- 


[82]     THE    LAST   DAYS   OP    JESUS    CHRIST 

many  more  than  in  any  other  civilized  nation 
taught  by  the  religious  and  political  leaders 
and  more  fully  than  in  any  other  nation  em- 
bodied in  the  government.  That  ideal,  as  ex- 
pressed by  their  press,  their  professors,  their 
preachers,  their  political  leaders,  has  been 
that  might  makes  right;  that  one  race  must 
dominate  Europe ;  that  the  Slav  and  the  Latin 
races  must  be  subj  ect  to  the  Teuton  race ;  that 
war  is  a  biological^  a  moral,  and  a  Christian 
necessity;  that  there  is  no  brotherhood  of  na- 
tions; that  the  uncivilized  peoples  are  the 
**spoils"  of  the  civilized  nations,  and  the 
smaller  nations  ought  of  right  to  be  subject 
to  the  greater  nations.  While  the  German 
Empire  has  been  illustrating  in  the  trenches 
and  in  its  treatment  of  Belgium  the  law  of 
the  forest,  struggle  for  existence  and  survival 
of  the  strongest,  democracy  has  been  illus- 
trating in  the  prison  camps  and  the  hospitals 
the  law  of  human  brotherhood.  And  by  the 
contrast  the  world  is  learning  the  lesson 
which  it  apparently  could  not  learn  either 
from  the  vision  of  the  poets  or  the  very  im- 
perfect object-lesson  of  one  very  imperfectly 
developed  democratic  nation. 

To  the  question  of  the  day,  asked  by  some 
cynically,  by  some  in  great  perplexity.  Has 
God  forgotten  us,  or  is  there  no  God  ?  my  an- 
swer is;  God  is  teaching  the  human  race  the 


THE    LAST    DAYS    OF    JESUS    CHRIST     [83] 

lesson  of  justice,  liberty,  and  order — the  les- 
son, that  is,  of  human  brotherliood  based  on 
self-control  and  mutual  respect;  as  William 
George  taught  the  waifs  and  strays  of  New 
York  City  in  the  George  Junior  Republic,  as 
Mr.  Osborne  wished  to  teach  the  criminals  in 
the  State  Prison,  as  my  teacher  friend  taught 
the  girls  in  her  school-room  by  allowing  the 
pupils  to  learn  life's  lesson  in  life's  great 
school,  the  school  of  actual  experience. 

Jesus  said  to  his  disciples  nearly  nineteen 
hundred  years  ago:  "The  princes  of  the  Gen- 
tiles exercise  dominion  over  them,  and  they 
that  are  great  exercise  authority  upon  them. 
But  it  shall  not  be  so  among  you :  but  whoso- 
ever will  be  great  among  you,  let  him  be  your 
minister;  and  whosoever  will  be  chief  among 
you  let  him  be  your  servant."  These  two 
ideals  of  government,  the  autocratic  and  the 
democratic,  the  pagan  and  the  Christian,  are 
engaged  to-day  in  a  life-and-death  struggle 
on  the  battlefields  of  Europe,  and  the  world 
has  learned  more  of  the  principles  and  the 
spirit  of  human  brotherhood  in  these  three 
years  of  war,  in  seeing  the  evil  wrought  by 
the  one  and  the  beneficence  wrought  by  the 
other,  than  it  learned  in  all  the  centuries  that 
preceded. 

As  this  paper  is  going  to  press  the  news 
reaches  us  of  the  revolution  in  Russia,  the 


[84]     THE    LAST    DAYS    OF    JESUS    CHRIST 

abdication  of  the  Czar,  the  overthrow  of  the 
Russian  autocracy,  and  the  liberation  of  the 
exiled  and  the  imprisoned  lovers  of  liberty. 
It  is  too  soon  to  estimate  aright  the  full  sig- 
nificance of  this  revolution,  but  it  is  reason- 
ably certain  that  the  old  regime  of  irrespon- 
sible despotism  will  never  be  restored,  that 
even  if  some  representative  of  the  old  dynasty 
should  be  called  to  the  throne  it  would  not  be 
as  an  autocrat  but  as  a  constitutional  mon- 
arch, that  never  in  the  future  will  the  rights 
and  liberties  of  the  Russian  people  be  sub- 
ject to  the  whims  of  a  cruel  and  corrupt 
bureaucracy.  And  because  this  revolution  has 
been  accomplished  by  the  people  themselves^ 
their  self-reliance,  self-control,  courage,  and 
manliness  have  been  developed  as  they  could 
not  have  been  developed  by  any  supernatural 
intervention  in  their  behalf. 

I  do  not,  then,  believe  that  this  European 
war  indicates  either  that  there  is  no  God  or 
that  he  is  an  indifferent  and  a  feeble  God.  It 
indicates  that  his  faith  in  his  children  is  so 
great  and  his  love  for  them  is  so  strong  that 
he  dares  to  leave  them  at  times  to  learn  in 
life's  bitter  struggles  the  real  meaning  and 
the  real  values  of  life.  And  the  lesson  al- 
ways has  been  and  always  will  be  worth  all 
that  it  costs. 

And  this  lesson   I  would  that  every  one 


THE    LAST    DAYS   OF    JESUS    CHRIST     [85] 

might  learn  who  has  ever  personally  experi- 
enced the  sense  of  desolate  loneliness  ex- 
pressed in  the  cry,  "My  God,  my  God,  why 
hast  thou  forsaken  me?" 

Sometimes  our  sins  have  hidden  God's  face 
from  us:  "that  he  will  not  hear?"  I  would 
rather  say  that  we  cannot  hear.  He  has  not 
forsaken  us,  but  we  have  forsaken  him. 
When  Jesus  bade  Judas,  "What  thou  doest 
do  quickly,"  and  Judas  went  out  and  "it  was 
night,"  Jesus  did  not  forsake  Judas;  Judas 
forsook  Jesus.  When  our  Father  complies 
with  an  unfilial  demand  and  gives  us  our  in- 
heritance to  spend  as  our  self-will  dictates, 
and  we  depart  from  him,  and  by  and  by  we 
know  the  great  loneliness  of  a  disappointed 
life,  there  is  only  one  remedy — a  return  to 
loyalty  and  a  life  of  self-devotion  to  the 
Father's  will. 

Sometimes  we  are  wearied  by  overwork, 
or  by  overwrought  and  exhausted  emotions, 
or  by  a  despairing  conviction  that  we  have 
misunderstood  our  Father's  will  because  we 
did  not  possess  our  Father's  spirit.  Then  life 
no  longer  seems  worth  living  and  we  would 
desert  if  we  dared.  So  Elij  ah  thought  to  re- 
store the  loyalty  of  his  Nation  to  Jehovah  by 
putting  to  death  the  priests  of  Baal,  and,  fail- 
ing to  get  from  an  apathetic  people  any  re- 
sponse to  his  undivine  enthusiasm,  would  have 


[86^     THE    LAST   DAYS   OF    JESUS   CHRIST 

been  glad  to  commit  suicide,  but  had  either 
too  much  conscience  or  too  little  courage.  In 
such  a  time  we  had  best  imitate  Elijah's  ex- 
ample, lie  down  and  sleep,  rise  up  and  eat, 
give  our  exhausted  nerves  a  chance  to  recover 
their  tone,  and  re-learn  the  lesson  we  so  easily 
forget,  that  the  Kingdom  of  God  comes  not 
with  tempest,  earthquake  and  fire,  but  with  a 
still  small  voice.  Then  in  returning  and  rest 
we  shall  be  saved,  in  quietness  and  in  con- 
fidence we  shall  recover  our  strength. 

In  our  time  there  are  many  who  have  iden- 
tified faith  with  creed,  religion  with  theology, 
God  with  definitions  of  God.  Their  defini- 
tions are  proved  inadequate,  their  theology 
is  darkened,  their  creed  is  shattered,  and  they 
feel  themselves  forsaken.  So  Job  had  be- 
lieved that  if  he  were  virtuous  he  would  be 
happy;  he  had  been  virtuous  and  he  was  not 
happy.  His  creed  proved  false.  In  the  in- 
tellectual chaos  of  the  hour  God  disappeared. 
"Behold,  I  go  forward,  but  he  is  not  there; 
and  backward,  but  I  cannot  perceive  him ;  on 
the  left  hand,  where  he  doth  work,  but  I 
cannot  behold  him:  he  hideth  himself  on  the 
right  hand  that  I  cannot  see  him."  The  God 
whom  he  could  not  find  by  searching  he  found 
by  trusting;  the  God  whom  he  could  not  find 
without,  he  found  within.  His  agnosticism 
was  theological,  not  spiritual.     He  was  a  de- 


THE    LAST   DAYS   OP    JESUS    CHRIST     [87] 

vout  agnostic,  and  Ms  prayer,  "Oh  that  I 
knew  where  I  might  find  him!  that  I  might 
come  even  to  his  seat"  was  answered  when  he 
found  his  God  in  the  mystery  of  life,  a  God 
whose  greatness  is  unsearchable. 

But  this  experience  of  "forsaken"  may 
come  to  us  as  it  came  to  Jesus.  The  Father 
may  throw  us  on  our  own  resources  and  leave 
us  to  ourselves:  perhaps  to  learn  how  weak 
we  are,  perhaps  to  learn  self-reliance,  cour- 
age, independence.  Ella  Wheeler  Wilcox's 
little  poem  does  not  give  the  whole  truth 
about  prayer,  but  she  truly  portrays  one  mes- 
sage which  life  sometimes  brings  to  each  one 
of  us: 

All  thine  immortal  powers  bring  into  play, 
Think,  act,  strive,  reason — then  look  up  and  pray. 

Christ  sent  his  disciples  out  in  couples  to 
preach  the  Gospel  apart  from  him.  They 
learned  to  preach  by  preaching.  God  does 
not  solve  our  problems  or  fight  our  battles  for 
us.  He  inspires  us  to  solve  our  own  problems 
and  strengthens  us  to  fight  our  own  battles. 
Sometimes  he  does  this  by  leaving  us  alone, 
for  so  he  best  calls  out  all  our  powers. 

This  experience  of  loneliness  comes  to  all 
of  us  sometimes,  I  suppose — an  experience 
when  our  prayers  seem  to  get  no  response, 
when,  as  a  friend  once  said  to  me,  they  go 


[88]     THE    LAST   DAYS    OF    JESUS    CHRIST 

no  higher  than  the  ceiling.  This  is  not  al- 
ways a  sign  of  our  weakness,  our  sin,  nor  of 
God's  absence  or  indifference.  Perhaps  he  is 
testing  us  to  see  what  we  can  do.  Perhaps 
our  loneliness  is  a  call  to  greater  courage 
and  more  strenuous  endeavors.  Then  let  me 
go  forward  to  feed  the  hungry,  though  I  have 
only  five  loaves  and  two  little  fishes;  go  for- 
ward to  fight  the  strong  armed  evil,  though 
I  have  only  a  sling  and  five  smooth  stones  out 
of  the  brook.  And  let  my  prayer  still  be  My 
God,  though  because  of  the  gathering  dark- 
ness I  cannot  see  his  form,  because  of  the 
shouting  multitude  I  cannot  hear  his  voice, 
and  in  the  tumult  of  my  own  troubled  heart  I 
can  discern  no  consciousness  of  his  presence. 


THE    LAST    DAYS    OF    JESUS    CHRIST     [89] 


Father:  we  do  not  ask  for  Thy  companion- 
ship, for  that  we  know  we  always  have,  but 
we  do  ask  that  we  may  better  understand  Thy 
companionship  and  realize  it  more.  There 
are  times  when  the  eternal  things  seem  very 
real,  and  we  are  surer  of  the  things  that  are 
unseen  than  of  the  things  that  are  seen;  at 
other  times  the  eternal  realities  are  obscure 
and  seem  unreal.  We  sail  life's  ocean  as  we 
sail  the  sea;  sometimes  bright  sun  and  blue 
skies,  sometimes  storms  when  we  cannot  see 
— nay,  scarce  so  much  as  a  hand's-breadth 
before  our  eyes.  Yet  even  then  may  we  walk 
by  faith  and  be  sure  Thou  art,  although  we 
cannot  see  Thee.  When  Thou  seemest  to  be 
sleeping  and  we  wonder  if  Thou  carest  not 
whether  we  perish  or  not,  still  may  we  have 
faith  in  Thee.  When  Thy  coming  is  not  un- 
derstood and  we  are  terrified,  calm  our  fears 
that  we  may  hear  Thy  voice  saying,  "It  is  I, 
be  not  afraid."  When  Thou  seemest  to  have 
departed  and  we  say  to  ourselves  "We  trusted 
this  should  have  been  He  who  would  have  de- 
livered us,'*  walk  by  our  side,  though  Thou 


[90]     THE    LAST    DAYS    OF    JESUS    CHRIST 

dost  walk  incognito_,  and  make  our  hearts  to 
burn  again,  and  then  reveal  Thyself  to  us, 
and  cause  us  to  know  that  Thou  dost  never 
forget  us,  though  we  forget  Thee,  and  never 
art  absent  from  us,  though  we  seem  to  absent 
ourselves  from  Thee.  And  if  the  time  shall 
come  when  Thou  dost  keep  silence,  dost  not 
answer  our  prayers,  dost  hide  Thyself  so  that 
we  cannot  find  Thee,  dost  leave  us  to  solve 
our  problems,  bear  our  burdens,  fulfill  our 
tasks  without  Thine  aid,  still  may  we  be  loyal 
to  Thee,  count  the  problem  one  Thou  hast 
given  us,  the  burden  one  Thou  hast  permitted 
to  be  laid  upon  us,  the  task  one  Thou  hast  al- 
lotted to  us,  and  summon  all  our  wisdom,  all 
our  courage,  all  our  powers  to  do  Thy  will, 
rejoicing  that  Thou  dost  repose  in  us  such 
trust  and  confidence.    Amen. 


VICTORY 

CHRIST  CONQUEROR 
OF  DEATH 


[92]     THE    LAST    DAYS    OF    JESUS    CHRIST 

Loud  mockers  in  the  roaring  street 
Say  Christ  is  crucified  again; 

Twice  pierced  His  gospel-bearing  feet 
Twice  broken.  His  great  heart  in  vain. 

I  hear  and  to  myself  I  smile 

For  Christ  talks  with  me  all  the  while 

No  angel  now  to  roll  the  stone 
From  off  His  unawaking  sleep; 

In  vain  shall  Mary  watch  alone. 
In  vain  the  soldiers  vigil  keep. 

Yet  while  they  deem  my  Lord  is  dead 
My  eyes  are  on  His  shining  head. 

Ah!  never  more  shall  Mary  hear 
That  voice  exceeding  sweet  and  low. 

Within  the  garden  calling  clear, 
Her  Lord  is  gone  and  she  must  go. 

Yet  all  the  while  my  Lord  I  meet 
In  every  London  lane  and  street. 
Poor  Lazarus,  shall  wait  in  vain 

And  Bartimaeus  still  go  blind; 
The  healing  hem  shall  ne'er  again 

Be  touched  by  suffering  human-kind. 

Yet  all  the  while  I  see  them  rest. 
The  poor  and  outcast,  on  His  breast. 

No  more  unto  the  stubborn  heart 

With  gentle  knocking  shall  He  plead, 

No  more  the  mystic  pity  start, 

For  Christ  twice  dead  is  dead  indeed. 

So  in  the  street  I  hear  men  say 

Yet  Christ  is  with  me  all  the  day. 

Richard   Le   Gallienne. 


THE   LAST    DAYS    OF    JESUS    CHRIST     [93] 


The  resurrection  of  Jesus  Christ  was  not 
an  extraordinary  event.  It  was  an  extraor- 
dinary evidence  of  an  ordinary  event.  All 
men  die  as  Christ  died.  All  men  ever  since 
God  breathed  into  man  the  breath  of  his  life 
have  risen  from  the  dead  as  Christ  rose. 
Death  and  resurrection  are  synonyms.  They 
are  simply  different  aspects  of  the  same  fact. 
They  are  both  the  separation  of  the  spirit 
from  the  body.  Resurrection  is  the  upspring- 
ing  of  the  spirit  from  the  body.  Death  is 
the  decay  of  the  body  when  the  spirit  has 
left  the  temporary  tenement. 

If  I  believed  that  the  resurrection  of  Jesus 
Christ  was  an  exceptional  event,  I  might  have 
the  difficulty  in  believing  which  is  experienced 
by  some  of  my  skeptical  friends.  But  I  do 
not  think  it  was  an  exceptional  event.  It  is 
exceptional  only  in  this  respect,  that  some- 
how the  despairing  disciples  had  evidence  of 
their  Master's  continuing  life  which  banished 
their  despair,  transformed  their  cliaracters, 
and  endowed  them  with  new  life.  Did  the 
spirit  of  the  Master  return  to  reanimate  the 
body  which  it  had  left?  Or  did  the  disem- 
bodied spirit  appear  to  the  unsealed  eyes  of 


[94]     THE    LAST    DAYS    OF    JESUS    CHRIST 

the  disciples?  I  do  not  know.  There  are 
some  incidents  narrated  in  the  Gospels  which 
indicate  one  conclusion^  some  incidents  which 
indicate  the  other.  It  is  not  material  to  de- 
termine which  opinion  is  correct. 

But  somehow  the  disciples  came  to  believe 
that  their  Master  was  not  dead,  but  living; 
not  gone  away,  but  still  their  leader,  their 
teacher,  their  master. 

That  belief  I  share  with  them.  If  it  had 
not  been  for  that  belief,  Christianity  would 
have  died  on  the  cross  and  been  buried  in  the 
tomb  of  Joseph  of  Arimathea.  With  their 
Master's  death  hope  died  and  the  disciples 
planned  to  go  back  to  their  fishing.  It  was 
with  difficulty  that  they  were  convinced  that 
he  was  risen  from  the  dead.  At  first  the  re- 
ports of  his  resurrection  seemed  to  them  like 
women's  tales.  With  the  conviction  that  their 
Master  still  lived  they  became  new  men. 
Cowards  before,  they  were  endowed  with 
courage.  Dumb  before,  they  spoke.  They 
had  been  awed  by  the  ecclesiastics  whom,  now 
they  defied.  Their  theme  was  not  the  Ser- 
mon on  the  Mount,  new  ethics,  a  spiritualized 
Ten  Commandments.  It  was  a  gospel,  a  glad 
tidings.  The  Deliverer  had  come;  he  would 
emancipate  the  world;  he  would  bring  in  the 
hoped-for  kingdom  of  God,  the  kingdom 
which  would  be  righteousness  and  peace  and 


THE    LAST    DAYS    OF    JESUS    CHRIST     [95] 

universal  welfare.  Their  faith  in  the  risen 
and  living  leader  changed  the  Jewish  holiday 
of  the  seventh  day  into  the  Christian  holiday 
of  the  first  day  of  the  week.  It  changed  the 
character  of  the  day  from  a  day  of  rest  to  a 
day  of  inspiration.  It  changed  it  from  a  He- 
brew ceremonial  to  a  world  gala  day. 

It  did  more.  It  changed  for  the  disciples 
their  conception  of  death.  The  graves  were 
empty,  the  heavens  were  populous.  One  dis- 
ciple heard  in  imagination  his  martyred  com- 
panions singing,  "Blessing,  and  glory,  and 
wisdom,  and  thanksgiving,  and  honor,  and 
power,  and  might,  be  unto  our  God  for  ever 
and  ever."  Another  saw  these  companions 
risen  from  their  resting-places,  looking  down 
upon  their  late  companions  on  the  earth,  and 
cheering  them  on  in  their  progress  toward  the 
goal — the  kingdom  of  God.  Death  lost  its 
sting.  The  grave  was  no  longer  victor.  Death 
and  the  grave  became,  not  the  end  of  life,  but 
the  beginning.  The  tombs  of  the  pagans 
were  inscribed  only  with  memories:  "She  was 
a  good  wife";  "He  was  a  brave  soldier."  The 
tombs  of  the  Christians  were  inscribed  with 
symbols  of  hope:  the  anchor,  the  broken  egg- 
shell, the  sculptured  angel. 

Nor  was  this  all.  Love  received  a  new  in- 
spiration, life  a  new  significance.  Philan- 
thropists   were    few    and    philanthropy    was 


[96]     THE    LAST    DAYS    OF    JESUS    CHRIST 

paralyzed  in  pagan  Rome.  Mortals  found  it 
hard  to  work  and  to  suffer  for  the  betterment 
of  those  who  would  not  outlast  the  century. 
But  now  there  were  no  mortals.  And  im- 
mortals found  it  easy  to  work  and  to  suffer 
for  immortals.  Christianity  was  born,  not  at 
the  crucifixion,  but  at  the  resurrection.  Eas- 
ter, not  Christmas,  is  the  true  anniversary  of 
Christendom. 

What  our  faith  in  the  resurrection  of  Jesus, 
with  all  that  it  involves  and  implies,  has  done 
for  us,  his  followers,  is  indicated  by  a  picture 
of  what  disbelief  in  that  resurrection  involves. 
The  necessary  implications  of  that  disbelief 
are  eloquently  protrayed  by  Arthur  Clougli 
in  a  poem  ^  too  long  for  me  to  quote  in  its 
entirety.  Three  verses  selected  from  that 
poem  must  here  suffice: 

Eat,  drink,  and  play,  and  think  that  this  is  bliss: 
There  is  no  heaven  but  this; 

There  is  no  hell, 
Save  earth,  which  serves  the  purpose  doubly  well, 

Seeing  it  visits  still 
With  equalest  apportionment  of  ill 
Both  good  and  bad  alike,  and  brings  to  one  same 
dust 

The  unjust  and  the  just 
With  Christ,  who  is  not  risen. 


*  Arthur    H.    Clough's    Poems,    "Easter    Day." 

Naples,  1849. 


THE    LAST    DAYS    OF    JESUS    CHRIST     [97] 

Eat,  drink,  and  die,  for  we  are  souls  bereaved: 
Of  all  the  creatures  under  heaven's  wide  cope 
We  are  most  hopeless,  who  had  once  most  hope, 
And  most  beliefless,  that  had  most  believed. 
Ashes  to  ashes,  dust  to  dust; 
As  of  the  unjust,  also  of  the  just — 
Yea,  of  that  Just  One  too! 
It  is  the  one  sad  Gospel  that  is  true — 
Christ  is  not  risen! 

Here,  on  our  Easter  Day 
We  rise,  we  come,  and  lo!  we  find  him  not. 
Gardener   nor  other,  on   the  sacred  spot: 
Where  they  have  laid  him  there  is  none  to  say; 
No  sound,  nor  in,  nor  out — no  word 
Of  where  to  seek  the  dead  or. meet* the  living  Lord. 
There  is  no  glistening  of  an  angel's  wings. 
There  is  no  voice  of  heavenly  clear  behest: 
Let  us  go  hence,  and  think  upon  these  things 

In  silence,  which  is  best. 

Is  he  not  risen?     No — 

But  lies  and  molders  low? 
Christ  is  not  risen?" 


To  *'eat,  drinkj  and  play,  and  think  that 
this  is  bliss"  seems  to  us  who  believe  in  the 
resurrection  foolish  as  well  as  vicious.  Fool- 
ish, too,  to  judge  the  meaning  and  merits  of 
life  from  this  little  earthly  section  of  a  life 
that  is  imperishable.  When  our  loved  ones 
spring  from  the  bodies  they  have  occupied, 
as  the  emancipated  bird  springs  from  the 
opened  door  of  its  cage,  our  souls  are  not  be- 
reaved. "Ashes  to  ashes,  dust  to  dust" — yes ! 
but  also  "the  spirit  to  God  who  gave  it."  We 
look  not  down  into  the  grave,  but  up  to  the 


[98]     THE    LAST   DAYS    OP    JESUS    CHRIST 

companionship  which  surrounds  us  and  in- 
spires us;  not  backward  to  the  memory  of  a 
love  now  lost,  but  forward  to  meeting  with 
our  loved  ones  who  are  not  dead  and  cannot 
die.  Our  Christ  does  not  lie  and  molder  low. 
He  lives,  our  invisible  Leader  and  Companion, 
who  brings  us  a  courage  greater  than  our 
own  with  which  to  meet  the  dangers  and  dif- 
ficulties encountered  in  our  brief  campaign 
to  gain  ourselves  and  give  to  the  world  his 
spirit  of  love,  service,  and  sacrifice. 


THE    LAST   DAYS   OF    JESUS    CHRIST     [99] 


Father^  to  some  of  us  at  all  times,  to  most 
of  us  sometimes,  the  story  of  Thy  Son's  resur- 
rection seems,  as  it  seemed  to  his  disciples,  an 
idle  tale :  the  earthquake,  the  opened  door,  the 
empty  tomb,  the  angel  visitors,  the-  appearing 
and  disappearing  Christ  are  so  remote  in 
time  and  so  foreign  to  our  common  experi- 
ences. But  we  know  that  the  Spirit  of  love, 
service  and  sacrifice  which  was  in  him  is  not 
dead  but  living,  working  within  us,  as  our 
Saviour,  our  Leader,  our  Companion.  He  ful- 
fills his  promise:  he  does  not  leave  us  com- 
fortless :  he  comes  to  us.  Then  we  know  him, 
for  he  dwells  with  us  and  is  in  us.  Then  we 
know  that  he  is  living,  for  in  him  we  also  live. 
Father,  we  ask  not  that  we  may  see  his  hands 
or  touch  his  wounded  side.  We  ask  that  in 
our  experience  his  blessing  may  be  realized: 
that  though  we  have  not  seen  him,  yet  we  may 
believe  in  him.  We  ask  no  celestial  vision,  no 
angel  interpreters,  no  Christ  in  human  form: 
these  would  not  suffice  our  needs  nor  satisfy 
our  desires.  We  ask  that  we  may  know  him 
and    the    power    of   his    resurrection,    being 


[100]     THE    LAST   DAYS    OP    JESUS    CHRIST 

made  partakers  in  his  life  and  in  his  sacrifi- 
cial death.  We  ask  that  we  may  keep  his  new 
commandment  and  love  one  another  as  he 
has  loved  us,  and  in  thus  sharing  his  self- 
sacrificing  love  may  know  that  we  are  with 
him  and  that  he  is  with  us.  And  this  fellow- 
ship with  Thy  risen  and  living  Christ  we  ask 
in  order  that  he  may  see  in  us  the  fruit  of  his 
sacrifice  and  be  satisfied.    Amen. 


Date  Due 


0£  1 5  '52 


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